At E / S, Google presented its vision of Android XR. But the “Android XR” that works on helmets is not the “Android XR” that works on smart glasses.
The Android XR name was in fact reported for the first time by Hugh Langley from Business Insider 18 months before Google officially revealed it. According to this report, Google internally called an operating system for “Android XR” helmets, and a much simpler operating system for “Android Micro XR” glasses.
I am raising this because, since he officially revealed the two platforms in December, Google rather called them “Android XR”. The Samsung device is an “Android XR helmet”, while the prototypes of intelligent glasses with a small HUD that he showed at Ted and E / S were “Android XR Lunes”.
It is both confusing and deceptive. Because in reality, these are two completely different software platforms.
The Android XR that works on helmets is an extension of the Android experience you have on your phone or tablet, fully autonomous, with access to the Play Store and to a full -fledged developer SDK.
The Android XR which runs on smart glasses, on the other hand, is a very cut version of Android for which Google has not announced any SDK or platform, where your phone manages a large part of IT, similar to Ray-Ban meta-lunes.
Of course, these two platforms have the same AOSP At the heart, and yes, you will find some of the same Google services on both. But the similarities stop there.
Imagine if Apple had presented the Apple Watch as performing “iOS”, or if Meta described Ray-Ban glasses as a horizon operating system. It is Google’s equivalent describing these smart glasses as an Android XR performer.
I imagine that Google’s strategy here is motivated by the success of Ray-Ban Meta, the major media threshing around the Meta Orion prototype and the poor public reception at the first generation Pro Apple Pro. Essentially, I suspect that the company intentionally tries to present its helmets and its glasses under a single banner of media threw, rather than to disclose the distinction between these two platforms.
Xreal Project will have supported Android XR via the tied washer
The project will have of Xreal will support Android XR from Google via a calculation washer attached with a Snapdragon Qualcomm chip.
You might say that the words “helmet” and “glasses” will make the difference obvious for consumers. But the distinction between these categories of devices has become blurred with the revelation of the aura of the Xreal project. Aura is designed to look like sunglasses from certain angles, but fueled by an attached calculation washer performing the helmet Version of Android XR.
This means that there are two completely different meanings of “Android XR glasses”. There are Android XR glasses, the type that will take Ray-Ban Meta, and there are Android XR glasses, like Meta and Apple will take with their next helmets.
So we will soon be in a world where you can buy Android XR glasses or glasses that run Android XR, and these are completely different software platforms. This will obviously lead to confusion.
When a developer releases an interesting application “for Android XR”, will consumers not understand the difference between the “Android XR glasses” and Xreal will have understood that the purchase of Warby Parker glasses will not give them access to said application? Do all developers understand that the Android XR applications they could create will not work on simple smart glasses?
As a reader of uploadvr, these distinctions may seem obvious to you. But the nature and limits of XR helmets and smart glasses are not widely known to the general public.
Google has again shown elegant smart glasses with a hud
At Google I / O 2025, the company gave another demo of intelligent “prototypes” glasses with a HUD, showing notifications, photos and many Gemini.
The solution here is to give the operating system intelligent glasses its own name. Google could reuse the name “Glass Os” that he used for glass, for example, or use a name as “Glasses OS”, similar to the way he calls his SmartWatch Wear Wear OS platform.
Of course, no equipment of equipment has yet launched a “Android XR” product, and it is possible that marketing and public relations around these products make the distinction that I clear. But given Google’s messaging so far, I fear that clear positioning is not the priority of the company.
