With 2024 drawing to a close, it's time to look ahead to a new year that could be filled with bold steps by major tech players. As rumors swirl about a foldable iPhone, the Nintendo Switch 2, a Galaxy S25 Slim smartphone, and redesigned OLED MacBooks, Samsung may topple them all in 2025 by once again debuting an entirely new product.
Earlier this year, Samsung welcomed the all-new Galaxy Ring into its catalog of wearables. It announced the smart ring during January's Galaxy Unpacked event and revealed its release during the company's second Galaxy Unpacked event in July.
According to the Korean outlet Yonhap News, Samsung may be preparing to start 2025 in much the same way, with the company reportedly planning to finally unveil its long-awaited smart glasses during January's Galaxy Unpacked event.
Samsung Galaxy Unpacked 2025: Are smart glasses in the cards?
According to a report by Yonhap News, Samsung is expected to reveal its first venture into the mixed reality space as early as January's Galaxy Unpacked event.
The smart glasses expected to be revealed are the result of a collaboration between Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm first announced during Samsung's February 2023 Galaxy Unpacked event.
The trio seeks to not only develop a pair of mainstream AR glasses, but a new mixed reality platform — including the software that powers them.
Each of the trio's inputs seems fairly intuitive: Qualcomm will supply the processor (as it does with Meta's third-generation Quest headsets and the popular Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses), Samsung will design the frames themselves, and Google will provide the platform.
The latter will likely be an adaptation of Google's 'Project Astra' tech demo, which was showcased during Google I/O in May. (Video shown below.)
It was believed that the initial collaboration would be to develop a premium mixed reality headset to compete with Apple's Vision Pro.
However, during an interview with CNBC in September, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon revealed that a pair of mixed-reality smart glasses were in the works. With the high-tech frames being designed to pair with smartphones.
It's presently unclear if a premium headset is still a potential outcome of the partnership. However, a recent leak purporting to reveal the technical specs (no pun intended) of Samsung's upcoming smart glasses would suggest that they're the most likely candidate to be debuted first.
Samsung Galaxy Glasses: What can we expect?
Samsung's smart glasses ambitions go back much further than its partnership with Qualcomm and Google.
In 2021, a leak revealed an internal showcase of a product called Samsung Glasses Lite. These frames worked similarly to current AR glasses like those offered by XREAL and VITURE.
However, unlike those products, Samsung's glasses were shown to be wireless and make use of hand gestures for interaction — something that both VITURE and XREAL have yet to fully offer (though rumors point to this not being a distant dream for future commercial products, especially following the launch of VITURE's Pro Neckband).
That said, the Samsung Glasses Lite never materialized as an actual product, and with Qualcomm's Cristiano Amon stating that the trio's smart glasses would be set to pair with smartphones, it is fair to assume that the upcoming frames will use smartphones as a computing puck, similar to how XREAL use the XREAL Beam Pro to power the more advanced features of its AR glasses.
That said, while the original report from Yonhap News does indicate that the new Samsung AR/XR glasses will be briefly showcased with an image or video during January's Galaxy Unpacked event, there's no reason to believe that these will be the first of Samsung's smart glasses we will see.
Similar to how Meta revealed its advanced Orion smart glasses during Meta Connect 2024, Samsung may be willing to give us an advanced look at a later model of its AR glasses, while providing us with something more modest in the meantime.
After all, the recently leaked specs for Samsung's smart glasses don't indicate a pair of frames set to challenge XREAL or VITURE, but a pair of AI smart glasses that more closely resembles the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Samsung Glasses (rumored) | Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 (Unspecified generation) | Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 |
| Camera | Sony IMX681, 12MP | Unspecified, 12MP |
| Battery | 155 mAh | 154 mAh |
| Weight | 50 grams | 48-51 grams |
| AI | Google Gemini | Meta AI |
Outlook
While we can split hairs over which type of smart glasses Samsung may be preparing to showcase at next year's opening Galaxy Unpacked event, it would seem that there's growing evidence to suggest we will at the very least be seeing something smart glasses related from the South Korean giants in January.
At present, we expect Samsung's first Galaxy Unpacked event of 2025 to take place on January 23. However, an official date is yet to be confirmed.
In the meantime, the Yonhap News report does suggest that the XR platform Samsung's glasses will make use of may be revealed as soon as this month. While not as exciting to most as an actual product, this could be the first look at a true rival to Meta's impressive Horizon OS, which powers the company's mixed-reality headsets.
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