- Xreal is working on Android XR glasses
- They're codenamed Project Aura (the same name Google's rumored Glass 2 apparently had)
- The glasses are a collab between Xreal, Google and Qualcomm
Google and Samsung's Android XR collab has been a major focus, but at Google I/O 2025 a new (yet familiar) partner emerged to showcase the second official Android XR device: Xreal with Project Aura.
Xreal and its Xreal One glasses currently top our list for the best smart glasses thanks to their impressive audio and visual quality.
However, while they include AR elements – they make your connected device (a phone, laptop, or console, among other options) float in front of you like you’re in a private movie theatre, which is fantastic by the way – they aren’t yet as versatile as other smart glasses propositions we’re being promised by Google, Meta, Snap and others.
Xreal Project Aura – a pair of XR glasses officially referred to as an optical see-through (OST) XR device – should shift Xreal’s range towards that of its rivals thanks to its advanced Qualcomm chipset, Xreal’s visual system expertise, and Google’s Android XR software. The combination of which should (hopefully) form a more fully realized spatial computing device than we’ve seen from Xreal before.
As exciting as this announcement is – I’ll explain more below in a moment – we should keep our emotions in check until further details on Project Aura are revealed at the Augmented World Expo (AWE) in June, and in other announcements set to be made “later this year” (according to Xreal).
Simply because beyond its existence and its general design we know very little about Aura.
We can see it has in-built cameras, have been promised Qualcomm processors, and it appears to use the same dual-eye display technology exhibited by Xreal’s other glasses. Plus it'll tethered rather than fully wireless, though it should still offer all of the Android XR abilities Google has showcased.
But important questions like its cost and release date haven’t yet been detailed.
I’m hoping it’ll offer us a more cost-effective entry point to this new era of XR glasses, but we’ll have to wait and see before we know for certain if this is “a breakthrough moment for real-world XR” as Chi Xu, Co-founder and CEO of Xreal promises.
Still, even before knowing its specs and other key factors I’m leaning towards agreeing with Xreal’s CEO.
Meta should be worried
So why is this Xreal Android XR reveal potentially so important in my eyes?
Because while Meta has promised its Horizon OS will appear on non-Meta headsets – from Asus, Lenovo, and Xbox – since that announcement we’ve seen nothing of these other headsets in over a year. That is, beyond a whisper on winds (read: a small leak) about Asus’ Project Tarius.
Android XR on the other hand has, before launch, not only confirmed collaborations between Google and other companies (Xreal and Samsung) but shown those devices in action.
They aren’t just promises, they’re real.
Now the key deciding factor will be if Android XR can prove itself as an operating system that rivals Horizon OS in terms of the breadth and quality of its XR apps. With Google, Samsung, Xreal, and more behind it, I’m feeling confident that it will.
If it lives up to my expectations, Android XR could seriously shake up Meta’s XR dominance thanks to the varied XR hardware options under its umbrella out the gate – that should lead to competition resulting in better devices and prices for us consumers as an end result.
We’ll have to continue to watch how Android XR develops, but it looks like Google is off to a very strong start. For the first time in a while Meta might finally be on the back foot in the XR space, and the ball is in its court to respond.
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