Qualcomm’s Wireless AR Smart Viewer paves the way for next-gen AR glasses

Along with the brand new Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 and Snapdragon 7 Gen 1 chipsets for smartphones, Qualcomm today showcased its Wireless AR Smart Viewer. Powered by the Snapdragon XR2 platform, the Wireless AR Smart Viewer provides a reference design for next-gen premium, lightweight AR glasses.

Qualcomm claims that its new Wireless AR Smart Viewer cuts the cord and provides virtually lag-free augmented reality experiences using a fully integrated Qualcomm FastConntect 6900 system and the new FastConnect XR software suite. The reference design boasts a 40 percent thinner profile and a more balanced weight distribution. Qualcomm is sampling the reference design to select OEMs, and we should see next-gen AR glasses built on the new platform in the near future.

The reference design Wireless AR Smart Viewer features dual micro-OLED binocular displays offering a resolution of 1920 x 1080p per eye and frame rates of up to 90Hz. The viewer also packs dual monochrome cameras and one RGB camera to enable six degrees of freedom (6DoF) head tracking and hand tracking with gesture recognition.

Qualcomm further adds that the “reference design enables a wireless split processing architecture to distribute computing workloads between the smartphone and the AR glass. To achieve truly immersive AR experiences, the device obtains <3ms latency between the smartphone and AR glass. With the FastConnect 6900 solution, the reference design offers uncompromising Wi-Fi 6/6E and Bluetooth connectivity, allowing users to receive the faster commercially available speeds and increased range.”

As mentioned earlier, Qualcomm is sampling the Wireless AR Smart Viewer reference design to select OEMs. But the company aims to make it widely available in the coming months. At the moment, we’re not sure exactly which OEMs have access to the reference design.

What do you think of Qualcomm’s Wireless AR Smart Viewer reference design? Do you think it has the potential to revolutionize AR glasses? Let us know in the comments section below.