Samsung's Galaxy S25 launch event might include its long-awaited smart glasses reveal

Samsung Galaxy S24 hands on handheld back straight white
The launch event for the S24's sucessor could include Samsung's smart glasses (Image credit: Future | Roland Moore-Colyer)

After months of rumors and leaks, and teases by Samsung itself, the company might finally be ready to showcase its next wearable: its long-awaited smart glasses. And they could be revealed alongside the Samsung Galaxy S25 in early 2025.

That’s according to new details from Korean outlet Yonhap News (translated from Korean) which says the glasses will be revealed as part of an Unpacked event set to take place in January.

While Samsung has yet to confirm that such an event is taking place other rumors point to a January 23 date (via Android Police), and this timing would match up with Samsung’s showcase schedule from previous years – it usually kicks the year off with an Unpacked focused on its new flagship phones.

However, alongside its S25 phones, Samsung will reportedly show off its smart glasses, though they won’t launch right away. Instead the prototype will give us a taste of what’s to come when the full specs are revealed later, with Yonhap News saying they’re expected to actually arrive in the third quarter of 2025 (July / August / September), but given the delays they’ve seemingly faced so far we wouldn’t be shocked if the launch slipped later into 2025.

As with all rumors we should take these details with a pinch of salt. We've been patiently waiting for an update on Samsung’s XR efforts since the company announced that we’d hear something before the end of 2024 at its last Unpacked Event, and with less than a month until January 1 2025, Samsung might miss that self-imposed deadline, but hopefully not by a lot.

What is Samsung set to release?

Orange RayBan Meta Smart Glasses in front of a wall of colorful lenses including green, blue, yellow and pink

The RayBan Meta smart glasses Samsung must compete with (Image credit: Meta)

Samsung’s smart glasses have taken several forms based on what leaks have told us. At some point they were seemingly set to be a full-on Samsung XR headset like the Meta Quest 3 or (more appropriately) the Apple Vision Pro. Following the launch of the Apple headset Samsung reportedly went back to the drawing board, with the idea of it instead developing XR glasses being bandied about.

It was unclear if it was developing alternatives to the Meta Orion AR glasses prototype, or something simpler like the Xreal Air 2 AR glasses, but leaks have more recently solidified around the device being an alternative to the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

One leak teases that they’ll basically have identical hardware, with Samsung’s glasses having a Qualcomm AR 1 chipset, a 12MP camera sensor and a 155mAh battery capacity, and weighing 50g – compared to Meta’s glasses' 154mAh battery and 48g weight. Neither pair of glasses has a dedicated display.

One key difference is that Samsung’s smart glasses would rely on Google Gemini instead of Meta AI for their AI functionality.

This is all rumor and speculation for now of course, and we don't yet know how the Samsung smart glasses will shape up, or indeed if they’ll launch at all. But even at this perhaps less-impressive level compared to what was originally teased, the Samsung specs do sound pretty exciting, and could lead to a shake-up of our best smart glasses rankings.

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Hamish Hector
Senior Staff Writer, News

Hamish is a Senior Staff Writer for TechRadar and you’ll see his name appearing on articles across nearly every topic on the site from smart home deals to speaker reviews to graphics card news and everything in between. He uses his broad range of knowledge to help explain the latest gadgets and if they’re a must-buy or a fad fueled by hype. Though his specialty is writing about everything going on in the world of virtual reality and augmented reality.