- Samsung will hold a virtual event on October 21 to announce an Android XR device
- Buyers who reserve one now can get a $100 credit toward other Samsung devices
- Samsung, with Qualcomm and Google, has been provoking Project Moohan for months
Samsung has announced that it will announce its new XR headphones with Android XR. The new device and potential Apple competitor Vision Pro, currently called Project Moohan, will be unveiled on October 21 at 10 p.m. EDT (or 11 a.m. Wednesday in Samsung’s hometown, Korean time) at an event titled open worlds. We don’t know much about the device or Samsung’s launch plans, but if your interest has already been piqued, you can sign up to buy the headphones now and get a small bonus for your faith.
Samsung has been teasing Project Moohan for quite some time, and the device made a cameo last month at the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit… under glass. We haven’t seen an official working prototype yet. The new headphones will presumably use Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon XR2 chipset, but many questions remain about their specifications and capabilities.
Hopefully all of those questions will be answered in a week, because Samsung is ready to start taking money for these headphones. If you book a Moohan, and that probably No be the final name of the headset: Samsung will give you a $100 credit toward other Samsung devices after you complete your purchase.
What we know about Project Moohan: not much!
That tells us a few things. First of all, we will have real products available soon. Samsung probably wouldn’t offer a pre-release bonus for a product that won’t be available until next year. Will the new headphones be available on October 21? I hope so, but if not, I hope it’s available for the holiday shopping season.
Second, we have a slightly better idea of what Project Moohan might or won’t cost. That is, it will not be cheap. Samsung wouldn’t give a $100 bonus for a headset that costs $500 and competes with the Meta Quest 3. This will be a more expensive and hopefully more capable XR headset.
The results of Project Moohan will also launch Android XR, Google’s new platform for XR software development. We don’t know much about the apps and features that will be released with Android XR, but we can assume that Samsung will be the first of many device partners for Android XR, just like Android.
When we say XR we usually mean a mix of virtual reality and augmented reality. The latter involves using cameras to position virtual objects so that they appear in real-world space. Of course, smart glasses are considered the holy grail for XR hardware developments. We haven’t seen smart glasses among the Moohan Project news and tips, but we may be able to learn more, or even see Samsung’s first smart glasses, next week.
The Worlds Wide Open event is virtual, so you can watch it on Samsung’s YouTube channel, but it won’t be held live. We’ll try to get our hands on the new Project Moohan Android XR headphones as soon as we know what to call them, if not sooner, so check back next week to see if we know anything else.
