This year’s MWC exhibition covers five key points: 5G new energy, digital everything, open network, beyond reality+and financial technology. This year, MWC has more than 2000 exhibitors and more than 80000 participants.
Compared with CES in January, there are not many new XR products of MWC this year. There are no new VR products at the event site. Instead, AR glasses have become a highlight of this exhibition. The following will summarize the VR/AR booth new products and product experience that are worthy of attention at this MWC.
Xiaomi: Xiaomi Wireless AR Glasses Discovery
- During the MWC, in addition to the launch of Xiaomi 13 series and products such as Xiaomi Electric Scooter 4 Ultra, Xiaomi also released a high-tech AR glasses product, Xiaomi Wireless AR Glasses Discovery, with some parameters as follows:
- The integrated design is adopted, and the overall weight is 126g;
- Equipped with Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 platform, but without on-board storage, it still needs to be used with smart phones. Now it supports Xiaomi 13 series models;
- The optical scheme is a free-form surface light guide prism+two Micro-OLED screens, with a PPD of 58 and an eye brightness of up to 1200 nits;
- Glasses are equipped with three cameras for shooting, video recording, SLAM and gesture recognition;
- Equipped with electrochromic lenses, the solution provider is Boyu Technology;
- It supports gesture interaction, which can be used to open, slide, and return to the desktop.
At present, the only external platform to experience this product is XDA. According to some shared information, glasses need to be wirelessly connected to smart phones, but there is no delay in the experience. According to the official website, “relying on the self-developed low-latency communication link and Qualcomm Snapdragon Spaces, the communication delay between mobile phones and glasses is less than 3ms, and the full-link delay is as low as 50ms, which is comparable to the wired solution.”
In addition to the conventional multi-screen coordination, information prompt and other functions, the biggest highlight of this product is that it can be linked with Xiaomi Smart Home Ecological Products. For example, when you look at the table lamp, the switch button of the table lamp will appear in front of you; When you watch TV, you can drag the picture content to the end of the glasses to play. At present, the functional stability and the degree of hardware adaptation are not clear, but the functional design idea is quite innovative.
Because it is the “exploration version”, it is not difficult to think of the Xiaomi Intelligent Glasses Discovery version released by Xiaomi in September 2021. The latter uses the single-green Micro-LED+optical waveguide solution, with a total weight of only 51g, and can realize the functions of information prompt, call, navigation, translation, etc., but the product has not been put into mass production. The Xiaomi Wireless AR Glasses Discovery Edition may be the same as the previous generation of products. It belongs to a muscular product and may not be on the market.
Nubia: launch the first AR glasses to help upgrade the intelligent ecosystem of the whole scene
In addition to Xiaomi, ZTE also displayed its sub-brand Nubia Neovision Glass, the first AR glasses product of Nubia, during MWC. Its main parameters are as follows:
- Split design, bare metal weight 79g;
- Micro-OLED+Birdbath scheme is adopted, the screen PPI reaches 3500PPI, FOV is 43 °, the screen equivalent display area reaches 120 inches, and the maximum brightness reaches 1800 nits;
- Support 0-500 ° myopia adjustment;
- It has passed the double certification of Hi-Res and T V Rhine;
- Equipped with projection box.
The main function of this product is projection viewing. The double certification of Hi-Res and T ü V Rhine means that it may have better audio-visual performance, and the projection box will further enhance its application range. ZTE said that with the launch of the Nubia Neovision Glass, it strengthened Nubia’s strategic position in the 5G+XR field, helped ZTE achieve the “1+2+N” full-scene intelligent ecosystem 2.0 upgrade, and enabled multi-screen interconnection and interactive full-scene applications. The launch time and price of this product are not clear.
GoerTek: The first AR glasses reference design based on Qualcomm Snapdragon AR2 Gen 1 platform
When the Xiaomi Wireless AR Spectacles Discovery Edition was just released, due to its wireless solution, many people speculated that it might launch the Qualcomm Snapdragon AR2 platform for the first time, but in fact, this “launch” fell on the latest AR glasses reference design launched by Goertek and Qualcomm.
The Snapdragon AR2 platform is specially built for headworn AR devices, and distributed processing architecture is one of its highlights. That is, the glasses end processes data such as environment perception and camera sensor through the main processor and coprocessor, and some heavy calculations are handed over to terminals such as smart phones for processing. In addition, Snapdragon AR2 is equipped with Qualcomm FastConnect 7800 connection system, which supports WiFi 7 connection, and can realize stable wireless data transmission between smart phone terminal and AR glasses terminal. For the delay problem, Goertek pointed out that the delay between AR glasses and terminals can be less than 2ms.
The benefits of this scheme are mainly in several aspects. First, it can make the glasses out of line and more integrated; Compared with devices equipped with Snapdragon XR2 platform, it also has certain advantages in terms of volume and power consumption. These advantages can be seen from the reference design of Goertek’s AR intelligent glasses: compared with the previous reference design, its frame thickness is reduced by 12.8%, the leg height is reduced by 30%, and the overall weight is reduced to less than 100g.
At present, the reference design can be connected to smart phones equipped with Snapdragon 8-series mobile platform and certified as Snapdragon Spaces Ready. In the future, it will adapt to more mobile phones, PCs and other computing terminal platforms.
Samsung: is developing a hybrid reality product roadmap
At the Unpacked 2023 event in February, Samsung revealed that it would work with Google and Qualcomm to develop a hybrid reality (MR) platform. During the MWC, Patrick Chomet, executive vice president of Samsung Electronics, disclosed the news again and said that Samsung was developing a roadmap for MR products. However, Chomet did not disclose more information about the product or release time.
For the cooperation of the three enterprises, Chomet said, “Not only Qualcomm, Google and Samsung, we hope to prepare for the entire ecosystem. There will be many developers, content companies and application companies to prepare innovation and experience for this ecosystem… We can make terminals, Qualcomm can make chipsets, and Google can make operating systems. But in the end, we need more than these, but to build a dynamic ecosystem.”
Roh Tae-moon, head of Samsung’s smartphone business, also revealed during MWC that “we are developing prototype technology for XR devices. (These devices) will be launched after they are more complete and ready to enter the market.”
Based on some past information, the Korean platform Korea IT News revealed that Samsung Electronics would launch an XR device for professional developers in 2023. At that time, Samsung had developed several product prototypes and conducted relevant tests. At that time, the news also pointed out that the company was actively promoting cooperation with a number of global companies and planned to accelerate the popularity of XR by creating “killer content” in various fields such as entertainment, education, medical care and national defense.
During this year’s CES, Samsung showed two VR glasses that looked like sunglasses and seemed to use Pandake optical solution for vulnerable people. However, these two products are placed in the display box and cannot be experienced.
HTC: one hardware, multiple To B solutions
HTC’s latest XR product VIVE XR Elite Suite was released during CES. On MWC, HTC mainly displayed its To B solution, including the new VIVERSE for Business, VIVE Mars CamTrack, and REIGN CORE S2.
VIVERSE for Business: This is a PaaS service that can help enterprises create exclusive immersive virtual space. It provides modular design, and enterprises can quickly realize relevant customization and development including virtual space and virtual avatar according to their own needs.
VIVE Mars CamTrack: This is a virtual production solution, originally launched last year. It combines the use of VIVE Tracker and other devices and other VR technologies, which can effectively simplify the whole process from camera tracking technology to virtual photography.
REIGN CORE S2: This is a set of 5G private network solutions released by G REIGN, a subsidiary of HTC, which can provide fast, low-latency, high-capacity 5G network connection experience for outdoor scenes.
In addition to the solutions mentioned above, HTC also released a MR face pad accessory for the VIVE XR Elite Set. It is said that the MR face pad can give users a more open peripheral vision and improve wearing comfort.
Tooz: AR solution for prescription glasses market
Tooz is a joint venture between ZEISS and Deutsche Telekom. It demonstrated an AR solution specifically for the prescription glasses market during MWC.
Tooz has developed a curved waveguide technology. The official website message shows that its waveguide can be processed using the standard process of the ophthalmology industry like ordinary prescription lenses, which makes this scheme can be quickly introduced into the prescription glasses market. At present, there are not many AR glasses that support diopter adjustment. The idea of combining AR modules with prescription lenses may help further open the AR market.
At the MWC site, Tooz showed the prototype of its AR glasses. From the appearance, it is not much different from ordinary glasses. The lens leg and frame are slightly thick, and it contains battery, PCB, speaker and other components.
The product is monocular display and adopts Micro-OLED screen, which can realize common functions such as information prompt, answering and making calls, and motion recording. In addition, Tooz has also launched the Tooz SDK, which is convenient for developers and opticians to quickly create the corresponding AR experience.
PICO: The body tracker appears, and functions such as PICO 4 MR are expected to be enhanced
At the PICO 4 press conference last September, PICO showed us a body-sensing tracker, which is not yet available. At the MWC site, PICO provided the experience of this tracker.
The user can detect and capture leg movements by wearing a head display and then tying two personal trackers to his legs. It can not only introduce “two legs” for the digital avatar, but also provide additional monitoring data for sports and fitness. In addition, users can also wear it on their arms to improve the accuracy of motion detection.
PICO spokesman said that the launch time and product name of this product were still uncertain, but the product design has been basically finalized.
In addition to the tracker, PICO spokesman said that in the next few months, the full color perspective effect of PICO 4 and the MRC mixed reality recording function will be further enhanced.
Huawei: Demonstrate AR picture recognition function
Huawei demonstrated the AR search and “On-screen Lens” screen shot function of its aggregate search tool Petal Search. According to the information on the official website, Huawei mobile phone users do not need to open the camera to take photos when using the AR search function. They just need to click the visual search icon and point the camera at the object to receive the recognition results. Its recognition speed and range of objects are very good.
In addition to identifying items, users can also achieve text translation, copying and other functions with the help of OCR and machine translation technology. The screen lens function can be used to identify the content on the screen and conduct further processing such as image search and translation.
