While some think of Apple when it comes to augmented reality (AR) on smartphones thanks to its CEO Tim Cook extolling the many virtues of the technology, as well as various partnerships with companies that leverage its ARKit framework, Google has actually been working on the tech for a while.
In a way Google’s Project Tango broached the subject way before Apple did, although the project was eventually shut down, but not before Google announced its new AR framework, ARCore. According to a report from Variety, it seems that they have heard from their sources that Google’s ARCore could be ready for launch at MWC 2018.
Google announced ARCore back in August last year where it entered into testing on Pixel devices, but Variety’s report is claiming that the framework could be ready for non-Pixel handsets and its release could be announced at MWC 2018 which kicks off next week. The goal is apparently to bring ARCore onto 100 million phones in the near future, which shouldn’t be too hard considering how many Android devices there are out there.
It is unclear as to what kind of hardware requirements Google might have for phones to run ARCore, but it has been suggested that Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S9 and S9+ could be some of the first non-Pixel handsets to leverage the technology. Take it with a grain of salt for now, but we expect that we will find out more next week.
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