MWC2023: The time for a new stage of XR has arrived. Your headset will look like this in the future.

The 2023 World Mobile Communications Conference (MWC2023) has come to an end. As always, this exhibition has attracted communication industry-related technology companies from various countries around the world, including familiar technology suppliers such as Qualcomm. At the same time, domestic brands have also become the main focus of this exhibition. The biggest highlight at the exhibition, including Huawei, ZTE, Xiaomi, Honor, OPPO and other domestic mobile phone brands, all brought their latest technologies to the MWC2023 venue. It is worth noting that in addition to the unbeatable mobile phone products of these mobile phone-related brands at this exhibition, another familiar and innovative product type has also become a recommended product for mobile phone manufacturers to focus on, and that is XR related hardware. Although at MWC Such products have been common before, but this is the first time that domestic mobile phone manufacturers have released related products together.

Therefore, XR equipment has become a new hot spot at this MWC, which is not unrelated to the industry’s previous attention and investment in the concept of the metaverse. Of course, this is also due to the improvement in performance of hardware suppliers, which provides independent operation for XR equipment. Possibility, and the mobile phone industry’s urgent need to find new product forms are inseparable. So have the XR devices at MWC2023 met the requirements for mass production and general use scenarios? Let's take a look.

Xiaomi Wireless AR Glasses Explorer Edition (Photo source: Internet)

First of all, the wireless AR glasses Explorer Edition brought by Xiaomi is Xiaomi's first wireless AR glasses in the true sense. Unlike previous products, the biggest highlight of this pair of glasses is that it uses a MicroLED screen and is equipped with three front cameras. It is worth mentioning that the MicroLED screen is a retina-level screen, which is more expensive than the current MiniLED screen. Through the light-guiding prism and free-form optical module, it can achieve extremely clear picture display. In addition, this pair of glasses can also provide 1200nit of human eye brightness and can be worn and used under any light source conditions. The lenses are electrochromic lenses, which can be darkened to prevent light leakage, or remain transparent for AR applications. It is reported that this Xiaomi concept product weighs 126 grams, which can already be listed as the first choice for daily equipment.

Electrochromic lenses (Image source: Internet)

This Xiaomi wireless AR glasses exploration version currently supports Xiaomi 13 series models, and can be used for software development through Qualcomm Snapdragon Spaces, OpenXR and Microsoft MRTK development framework, providing support for its future scalability.

Gesture operation (picture source from the Internet)

At the same time, Xiaomi's wireless AR glasses exploration version uses NFC technology to connect to mobile phones. Wireless has also become one of its biggest highlights. Users can also control between virtual and real spaces through “micro gestures”, making it more Close to what we expect from AR devices.

OPPO Air Glass 2 glasses (Photo source: Internet)

In addition, the Air Glass 2 glasses brought by OPPO also use a MicroLED screen. It is positioned as an “intelligent assistant” for personal life and can support functions such as prompting, translation, navigation, reminders, voice-to-text, etc. Since this product uses the world's first resin diffraction optical waveguide lens developed by OPPO, it weighs only 38 grams, which is very light. This may also make it the world's lightest and thinnest binocular smart glasses.

Nubia AR glasses products (picture source from the Internet)

ZTE's Nubia brand has also brought the latest AR glasses product. This device focuses on the function of quasi-portable viewing. It can be connected to a mobile phone via a USB cable to enjoy a 120-inch virtual giant screen viewing experience at any time, with stereo sound. The performance of headphones and high-definition giant screen is only 79g, and it can be used as a personal audio and video device.

MicroLED display technology (picture source from the Internet)

It can be seen that the latest XR products have got rid of the bulky appearance of the past, focusing on lightweight and portable features. Through the improvement of hardware technology, the overall user experience has been improved. The MicroLED display technology mentioned above is designed to create high-definition picture quality for small screens. And designed, it has clearer, higher brightness, smaller size, and lower power consumption and has become the preferred material for XR products. Although this technology is still in the research and development stage, it still has shortcomings such as high cost and difficulty in mass production. , which requires packaging companies to reduce costs through process technology improvements and achieve the popularization of final equipment products.

Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 1 (Image source: Internet)

In addition to the screen, Qualcomm also plays a crucial role in core technology support. Most of the above-mentioned AR glasses use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 platform, which was first launched in 2019 and is still mainstream today. The core platform commonly used by XR headsets. However, in October last year, Qualcomm released the upgraded version of the platform, the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 1 platform, which can achieve 50% higher sustained power and 30% improved heat dissipation performance compared to the previous generation. This allows for the simultaneous use of more concurrent multimedia and sensory technologies and enables full sensory interaction.

In addition, the Snapdragon XR2+ platform introduces a new image processing pipeline that enables image delay times within 10 milliseconds, thereby unlocking a high-quality full-color see-through MR experience. In addition, the platform also supports parallel perception technology, including head, hand and controller tracking, 3D reconstruction, and low-latency video perspective.

In addition to hardware upgrades, Qualcomm also announced at MWC 2023 that it is working with seven global telecommunications companies, including China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI Corporation, NTT QONOQ, T-Mobile, Telefonica, and Vodafone, to create the next generation of AR glasses that are directly compatible with users' smartphones. It is reported that Qualcomm's goal is to create split AR glasses and open up and accelerate the connection between AR glasses and smartphones. At the same time, Qualcomm is also promoting cooperation with Samsung and Google in the MR field to create a vibrant MR ecosystem.

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