Shortly after launching its new smartphone flagship, Xiaomi got off to an early start in the upcoming augmented reality/mixed reality headset race.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday, the company unveiled the Xiaomi Wireless AR Glass Discovery Edition. This is Xiaomi’s first augmented reality headset and sits somewhere between Ray-Ban’s smart glasses and Apple’s rumored high-tech mixed reality headset.
Xiaomi’s AR glasses have a pair of MicroOLED displays that Xiaomi claims are “retina-level” displays with an “industry-leading” pixel density of 58 per degree. They’re powered by the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 1 chip and come with gesture controls, which means you can wave your finger in front of your face to interact with them.
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Xiaomi shared some examples of how this works in real-world use. For example, users should be able to select and open apps, swipe pages, and exit apps without using their smartphones (although they should be able to pair their smartphones and use them instead of relying on gestures). to control the glasses).
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Use cases include watching TikTok and YouTube videos (both apps can optimize the viewing area of your glasses, turning them into a kind of portable cinema) and controlling smart home devices.
Despite being a fairly high-tech product, Xiaomi’s glasses look like normal glasses, but just barely. Thanks to the magnesium-lithium alloy construction and the use of carbon fiber, they weigh in at 128 grams, not a light pair of glasses (for comparison, the Ray-Ban Story weighs 49 grams). Judging by the promotional photos, the face is also quite large, but still smaller than most VR headsets.
Xiaomi’s AR glasses require a Xiaomi 13 or another Snapdragon Spaces enabled device.
Credit: Xiaomi
In particular, to use Xiaomi’s AR glasses, you need to pair them with a Xiaomi 13 phone or another Snapdragon Spaces enabled device.
An important keyword in the announcement of Xiaomi’s AR glasses is “wireless”. Apple’s rumored upcoming mixed reality glasses are reportedly(opens in new tab) The first iteration will probably be very large and heavy as it is tethered to an external battery. In a press release, Xiaomi said:(opens in new tab) Although it is a “self-developed silicon oxygen anode battery”, it did not say anything about battery life.
Glasses labeled “Discovery Edition” probably won’t be widely available, at least initially. Xiaomi has not revealed any details regarding availability and pricing.
