Xreal unveiled its Android XR-powered smart glasses at I/O, but that wasn’t the only announcement
What you need to know
- Xreal unveiled Project Aura at Google I/O, the company’s first pair of Android XR-powered smart glasses.
- Project Aura will be the first pair of Android XR glasses on the market, likely coming later this year.
- Xreal also opened up preorders for Xreal Eye, a camera add-on for its existing Xreal One glasses that enable 6DoF tracking, photos, and mixed reality video.
Android XR is almost here, and along with the unveiling of the latest Android XR developer preview came a first look at Xreal Project Aura, the company’s first Android XR-powered smart glasses.
Xreal Project Aura will differentiate itself from the company’s other glasses by including Qualcomm silicon and Google’s new AR/VR operating system, Android XR, under the hood. This will allow the glasses to run Google Play Store apps as well as Google’s Gemini AI assistant, all in “a lightweight and tethered device,” according to Xreal.
The render of Project Aura that Xreal provided shows three cameras up front to capture spatial data, meaning the glasses will be able to track the space you’re in, similar to a VR headset. While Xreal didn’t describe the experience, these glasses will be able to overlay virtual imagery onto the real world, similar to the Xreal Air 2 Ultra glasses we saw at MWC 2024. This time, though, the hardware will not only be better, but the software experience will have a lot more development time behind it.
Project Aura is an optical see-through (OST) XR device, meaning you can see the real world through transparent lenses like a normal pair of sunglasses. These are useful for seeing notifications or navigating in real-time without looking down at a phone, helping to protect your safety in many ways while on a busy city street.
Project Aura will run Qualcomm silicon and the Android XR operating system, but they’ll still need to be plugged into your phone for power and communication. This is almost certainly the best way for Xreal to achieve the lightweight and slim form factor, while true standalone XR glasses are still a bit on the chunky side.
In its Google I/O keynote, Google noted that Samsung’s Project Moohan XR headset would be launching first. While the smart glasses side of Android XR still needs a bit more time in the oven, Xreal Project Aura will be the first device to debut the OS’s smart glasses era, potentially later this year or in early 2026.
Xreal Eye
Xreal Eye is a new $99 add-on for Xreal One smart glasses. The camera snaps into the POGO pins located on the underside of the Xreal One glasses’ nose bridge and requires no additional hardware to function.
Xreal says that Xreal Eye enables quick image capture with the press of a button on the side of the glasses, as well as spatial 6DoF tracking. Spatial 6DoF tracking is similar to a VR headset, so you’ll be able to move around more comfortably without the virtual display shifting to be centered on your vision. In other words, it will feel even more like a TV sitting in the real world than the glasses current 3DoF solution enables.
Since Xreal Eye uses a single camera, tracking won’t be quite as robust as what will be offered on Project Aura glasses, which features three cameras for greater accuracy.
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Pairing Xreal Eye and Xreal One with an Xreal Beam Pro will deliver the full experience, including mixed reality video capture straight from the glasses’ point of view. Without a Beam Pro, you’ll just be able to take pictures using the Eye camera.
The official Xreal Eye page is now live, and preorders are available in some countries. Xreal is expected to offer the Eye in late June, so be sure to sign up or preorder if you’re interested.
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