Samsung confirms it's working with Google to develop AR glasses

Samsung says it’s working with Google to enter the AR glasses race, confirming rumors and speculation circulating for months. Ahead of its Samsung Unpacked event today, Samsung confirmed to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman that the two companies will be working as “one team” to develop a pair of augmented reality glasses, joining the likes of Apple and Meta.

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Both of those companies have products in various stages of development but have yet to fully deliver on a practical pair of glasses that are actually wearable (and affordable). Meta’s Orion prototype glasses, for example, reportedly cost around $10,000 a pair to produce.

But Samsung and Google are expected to be co-developing the Android XR operating system, setting the stage for a pair of smart glasses that would potentially be useable across the Android ecosystem. The Android XR would then act as a unifying operating system for additional headset models from other developers.

Last year, Samsung released the Galaxy Ring, establishing itself in the wearables market, and in hindsight seems to be a logical springboard into the AR wearables market this year. The question is, how long do we have to wait?

TM Roh, Samsung’s president of mobile experience, told Bloomberg the company “will try to reach the quality and readiness we want as soon as possible,” but without a confirmed prototype or further information on a device, that could mean any number of things. 

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The partnership between the two companies isn’t limited to developing glasses and headsets. Samsung showed off a myriad of integrations with Google’s Gemini across its Galaxy S25 smartphones, including multimodal AI and improvements to Gemini’s usability across Samsung’s ecosystem of devices. 

But despite the power this partnership wields, development teams have their work cut out for them in developing AR wearables. Aforementioned production costs aside, getting the devices themselves down to a lightweight and wearable form factor has proven to be the biggest hurdle, with Meta even resorting to putting most of the device’s processing components in an external “puck.”

As far as Samsung and Google’s joint product goes, we’ll have to wait for developments, with more news likely dropping in the coming months.