Battery leak reveals more about Samsung’s new XR headset

If you watched Samsung Unpacked 2023 earlier this week, you will know that the corporate introduced a new initiative within the discipline of Extended Reality, or XR. What we did not get had been any particulars of an precise bodily product – which is the place a new leak is available in.

As noticed by GalaxyMembership (opens in new tab) (through SamMobile (opens in new tab)), a battery that has simply handed by regulatory certification in South Korea matches up with a specific mannequin quantity that the rumor mill related to an upcoming Samsung gadget final 12 months.

That gadget, with the mannequin quantity SM-I120, was regarded as some form of AR/VR wearable. Add within the announcement at Samsung Unpacked, and the looks of this battery module, and it seems to be seemingly that this {hardware} product is on the way in which.

Goodbye Gear VR

We cannot glean all that a lot data from this battery leak – we do not know the capability, for instance – but it surely factors to a standalone gadget that may work independently, with out a connection to a pc or a smartphone.

That makes it completely different from the Samsung Gear VR collection, gadgets which you needed to slot a cellphone into. We can count on a reasonably clear break from the digital actuality {hardware} that Samsung has pushed out previously.

It’s price remembering that this won’t be the product Samsung was referring to at Unpacked, in partnership with Qualcomm and Google – in reality it’d solely be a prototype. But it is an attention-grabbing peek into what’s coming sooner or later.

Analysis: what’s Extended Reality anyway?

Terms like digital actuality and prolonged actuality might be troublesome to maintain on high of – particularly when corporations use them in numerous methods. A label hooked up to one thing by one producer won’t imply the identical factor as a label utilized by one other producer.

What most individuals agree on is that digital actuality (VR) refers to utterly enclosed digital worlds (see the Oculus Quest 2, for instance). Augmented actuality (AR) refers to placing digital overlays on high of the bodily world, and that is one thing you are able to do with the cameras on lots of smartphones now (see Google Maps Live View).

Then there are gadgets that form of combine the 2: combined actuality (MR). Perhaps the very best instance of that is the Microsoft HoloLens, although the time period is sort of exhausting to pin down – generally it means a more supercharged, interactive model of AR, and generally it means VR with a touch of AR (comparable to a video name feed dropped right into a digital world).

Extended Reality (XR) is most frequently used as an all-encompassing time period that covers AR, VR and MR – which implies Samsung hasn’t given an excessive amount of away by telling us that it is engaged on new know-how. Expect the leaks and rumors to proceed.

• The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra might lastly dethrone the iPhone as video king