Qualcomm's new AR Smart Imager

Chip maker Qualcomm has introduced a new reference design for augmented reality glasses: an AR "smart viewer" that you can connect to a phone or a computer with a USB-C cable. These glasses, called XR1 Smart Viewer, are aimed to be very light and similar to sunglasses, while also providing features such as hand movement tracking and spatial awareness. The first glasses based on this design are slated to launch in mid-2021.

The XR1 was designed as a consumer-oriented and "must-have accessory" for phones and computers, rather than a self-contained product. It has two OLED displays with 1920x1080 resolution and 90Hz refresh rate, and it also houses an array of cameras to add a virtual overlay to the real world. The camera array can also support hand tracking as a control scheme and detect surfaces in the environment, so you can do things like fix a virtual window to the wall for multiple computer screens, or place a virtual object on a table and interact with it via gesture controls. However, like most AR glasses, they have a limited field of view of 45 degrees, roughly similar to that of the Microsoft HoloLens 2.

Lenovo has already announced a product based on the XR1 Smart Viewer reference design: the ThinkReality A3 glasses it unveiled at CES earlier this year. The ThinkReality A3 glasses will launch in mid-2021 at a currently unspecified price, following Lenovo's A6 business headset from 2019.

The XR1 Smart Viewer differs from last year's Snapdragon XR1 or XR2 platforms, which are a chipset pair optimized for virtual and augmented reality glasses, including the XR2-based Oculus Quest 2. The XR1 Smart Viewer is designed to perform some tasks using its onboard electronics, but offloads other tasks to an external computing device, allowing for a lighter design.

Qualcomm has spent the last few years pushing for the adoption of AR glasses, which it believes could stimulate the nascent 5G cellular market by popularizing high-bandwidth mixed reality applications. It previously partnered with Chinese company Nreal on Nreal Light, one of the few consumer-focused AR imagers used on a phone powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 or 865. Nreal Light was launched in Korea and Japan last year, and Nreal recently announced that it will be coming to the European Union and the US later this year.

To this day, AR glasses have struggled to become popular. However, the ThinkReality A3 and other XR1 Smart Imager-based products may find themselves competing with a few big companies. Facebook announced its imminent entry into the world of AR hardware last year, and plans to launch a series of Ray-Ban smart glasses with limited AR-like features in late 2021. It is also said that Apple is working on a high-quality AR / VR headset aimed at building a developer ecosystem.