Qualcomm announces Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 chip; might power Samsung’s headset

In terms of raw power, the new chip packs a GPU that is 15 per cent faster and a CPU that is 20 per cent faster than that of the predecessor. The company says this makes the GPU 2.5x faster while drawing 50 per cent less power.

Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 also brings up to 8x improvement when it comes to on-device AI performance, supports the latest Wi-Fi standard (Wi-Fi 7)  and features like foveated rendering, which makes areas you aren’t focusing on blurrier to save power and improve the overall performance.

(Image Source: Qualcomm)

In August last year, a prototype of a new Extended Reality headset Samsung was working on with Google and Qualcomm found its way to the internet. It had a sleek visor design that resembled the Meta Quest 3, but instead of fresnel lenses, used the lighter pancake lenses.

However, after seeing the Apple Vision Pro, the company reportedly decided to delay the product and bring improvements to the overall design and hardware. Similar to the Vision Pro, Samsung’s headset is speculated to not have any controllers and instead rely on hand and eye tracking.

Compared to the Vision Pro’s 4K resolution per eye, the Snapdragon XR2+ Gen 2 offers 4.3K resolution per eye, so Samsung might be able to beat Apple when it comes to visual clarity if it goes with Qualcomm’s latest offering.