At Augmented World Expo 2025 this week, Qualcomm announced its new Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1 chipset for smart glasses. It succeeds the Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1, which powers Ray-Ban Meta glasses, and was announced in 2023. According to the company, this chipset can turn smart glasses into a stand-alone device, and works without requiring an internet connection or having the glasses sync with a phone.
Snapdragon AR1+ Gen 1: Key details
The Qualcomm AR1+ Gen1 SoC comes with a 26% smaller package over its predecessor. With this chipset, users can expect an up to 20% temple height reduction for more compact glasses. It also promises to deliver enhanced image quality, size, power improvement, and the ability to run Small Language Models.
Further, the AR1+ Gen 1 SoC promises improved power management and efficiency, so things like Bluetooth audio playback, computer vision, video streaming, and voice commands from the future AR glasses are expected to be improved. It also assures a wake-up that is 7% less battery-intensive. The connectivity features include upgraded Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 support.
Currently, Qualcomm’s AR chips are used on popular smart glasses such as Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, Lenovo Group Ltd.'s A3, Sony Corp.'s Spatial HMD, Microsoft Corp.'s HoloLens 2, and others. However, the AR1+ Gen 1 SoC also comes with other wearables such as smartwatches and smart rings for things like motion gestures and 3DoF (three degrees of freedom) controls. Hence, we can expect this chipset to be used with upcoming AR glasses from Samsung or Meta, or even the upcoming smartwatches and other smart wearables for advanced on-device gesture controls.
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