Galaxy XR: The first Android XR headset

I think this is really cool, and the more competition and devices in this space the better. But absolutely no way I will spend that much money for a Google product, that they'll probably kill off in less than a year.

It's a Samsung product though

Exactly my first thought. "One year of support at best". It's sad that it's become a meme. I remember when they were the Good Guys...sigh.

Yeah but it's built around the Android XR platform, a Google product. If Google kills XR then the hardware won't be much use.

That doesn't make it a Google product.

Yeah, fair point, although it's this Android XR thing I don't trust will live a year.

Even if it did, to me Samsung + Google is just a no go:

Samsung: Bloated with apps I don't want, can't uninstall but probably won't be killed off.

Google: Lean, not too much bloat, but can't trust it to exist more than a year.

Google loves to make impactful changes for street creds, hardware manufacturers prefer not to support unsold products. The end result is the same.

Samsung has already partnered with Microsoft in the past to make WMR headsets, and that did not prevent Windows 11 from dropping support for the device. The very same could happen to a Android-based headset.

I wonder if Samsung has secured promises of commitment. IIRC they required Google to commit to improving Android's support for tablets before committing to devices like the Z Fold.

I'm not really seeing how re-emphasizing Google's involvement implies a reduced chance of abandonment. Google's kinda famous for that.

And additionally, Samsung never released their Odyssey VR (or it's successor) worldwide, which in my opinion was the reason WMR failed as it was the best of the WMR headsets at the time of their release (of course the HP Reverb was better, but it came out much later).