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Samsung and Google working on a Like Apple Vision Pro mixed reality VR headset running Android XR and Google Gemini. We already know that and even get it demoed it last year. But Samsung also revealed more than just its phone focus Samsung Unpacked winter eventspecifically, a common Google-Samsung AI ecosystem partnership that could be the missing piece to bring it all together. That AI-infused experience will be on the next-generation VR/AR headset this year, but it’s expected to run on Galaxy S25 phone and glasses to connect them.
In a sense, I already got a preview of what was to come at the end of last year.
Samsung’s vision for its products is all connected through AI. And now that AI is becoming consistent.
A vision of AI working in real time
Samsung briefly mentioned the upcoming VR / AR headset and glasses at the latest Unpacked event, but we already know about it. However, Samsung’s display of real-time AI that can see things on your phone or through cameras is really the trend expected to arrive in 2025.
Project Moohan (meaning “Infinity” in Korean) is a VR headset with passthrough cameras that mix virtual and real, like Vision Pro or Meta Search 3. The design feels like Meta has been discontinued Search Pro but with better specs. The headset has hand and eye tracking, runs Android apps through the Android XR OS that will be fully revealed later this year, and uses Google Gemini AI as an assistive layer throughout. on Google Project Astra tech, enabling that real-time assistance with glasses, phones and headsets, debuted the Samsung Galaxy S25 series of phones. But I have already seen it in action on my face.
My demos last year allowed me to use Gemini to help me while I was looking around a room, watching YouTube videos or doing anything else. Live AI needs to start in that live mode to use it, after it can see and hear what I’m looking at or hearing. There are pause modes to temporarily stop live help as well.
Samsung showed what the same real-time AI function looks like on the Galaxy S25 phones, and promised more. I was hoping it would work while watching YouTube videos, like it did on my Android XR demo. And according to Samsung and Google’s execs working on Android XR, it can even be used for live help while playing.
Gemini’s on-the-fly visual recognition skills may start to feel similar between glasses and phones.
Better battery life and processing…for glasses?
Samsung and Google also confirmed that they are working on smart glasses, also using Gemini AI, to compete Ray-Bans on Meta and a wave of other emerging eyewear. AR glasses are also apparently in the works.
While Project Moohan is a standalone VR headset with its own battery pack and processors, like Apple’s Vision Pro, the smaller smart glasses that Google and Samsung are working on — and any glasses after that — will rely on connection and processing assistance from telephones. to work. That’s how smart glasses like Meta’s Ray-Bans already work.
But, perhaps, having more features means that the phone needs more processing power. Live AI may start to become a more widely used feature, leaning on phones to continuously work to assist these glasses. Better processing, graphics, and above all, improved battery life and cooling as I feel are ways to make these phones better pocket computers for glasses later.
Personal data clouds are what Samsung and Google are relying on to drive smarter AI assistants in both glasses and phones.
A set of personal data that these AI gadgets need
Samsung also announced a vague-sounding Personal Data Engine that Google and Samsung’s AI will take advantage of, bucketing personal data into an area where AI can draw more sophisticated conclusions and connection to all the things that are part of your life.
How that is played out or secured, or where its limits are, is unclear. But it seems to be a repository of personal data that Samsung and Google’s AI can train and work with connected products, including watches, rings and glasses.
Camera-powered AI tools are only as good as the data that powers them, which is why many of these devices today feel clunky and awkward to use, including Ray-Bans in the Meta with their AI modes . Often, these AI devices hit walls when it comes to knowing things that your existing apps already know. Google and Samsung are clearly trying to fix that.
Do I want to entrust that process to Google and Samsung, or anyone else? How will these phones, and future glasses, make the relationship between AI and our data clearer and more manageable? It looks like we’re looking at a shoe-drop here, with more to come when Google’s I/O developer conference is likely to discuss Android XR and Gemini developments in more depth.
Samsung made Project Moohan its first headset, which followed with future glasses soon after. Expect Google to get more details with Samsung at the developer-focused Google I/O conference in May or June and possibly the full summer rundown at Samsung’s next expected Unpacked event . By then, we might know a lot more about why this seemingly boring new wave of Galaxy S25 phones might be building an infrastructure that will sport more vivid detail by the end of the year. …or even after that.
