Samsung & Meta could delay next-gen headsets for next-gen Qualcomm chip

Samsung and Meta plan to take on Apple’s Vision Pro and may delay the launch of their headsets to use a more powerful chipset

A lot is happening in the XR headset space. Samsung is reportedly teaming up with Google for its first-ever XR headset, while Meta may have the Quest Pro 3 headset in the works.

It’s being reported that the two upcoming headsets might not use Qualcomm’s XR2+ Gen 2 chipset introduced in January 2024. Instead, Samsung and Meta want to ship their headset with the next-gen Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 3 in a bid to take on Apple’s Vision Pro XR headset.

Samsung is said to be one of the first few companies to have access to the test units of XR2+ Gen 3 and is already testing them on its upcoming head-mounted devices (HMD).

Sony is rumored to be making a non-PSVR headset, and HTC is also reportedly holding back the launch of their XR devices in favor of a new and better chipset. Interestingly, despite being launched in January, we’re yet to see a device powered by the XR2+ Gen 2 SoC.

The XR2+ Gen 3, which is not to be confused with the XR2+ Gen 2 that was announced at CES this year…

Is primarily testing its variant with 16GB LPDDR5X RAM aka the same capacity as you see in Vision Pro

And is four more gigabytes more than what we saw in XR2+ Gen 1 (Quest Pro) pic.twitter.com/iqq6qJdxzw

— Brad Lynch (@SadlyItsBradley) May 21, 2024

While the details about the XR2+ Gen 3 are scarce, the upcoming Qualcomm chipset might support 16GB of RAM and 4K screens and may additionally use Oryon CPUs. This is at least 4 GB more than the XR2+ Gen 1 that powers the first-generation Meta Quest Pro.

Moreover, brands feel that with 16GB of memory and faster UFS 4.0 storage, the XR2+ Gen 3 could be better positioned to take on the Apple Vision Pro when compared to the XR2+ Gen 2. As a point of comparison, the Vision Pro also has the same amount of RAM and is considered among the best XR headsets in the current market.

While the brands are keen on matching Vision Pro’s specs, Qualcomm is following a two-year update cycle for the Plus version of its XR2+ Gen SoC. Considering that the XR2+ Gen 2 arrived in January, we might have to wait for the arrival of its successor, and the headsets powering it, unless Qualcomm decides to launch it sooner.