Xiaomi has pulled back the curtain on a pair of augmented-reality glasses it's working on called the Wireless AR Glass Discovery Edition, which are reported to be among the first in the industry to boast "Retina-level" image resolution.
Launched at the Mobile World Congress expo in Barcelona this week, the AR glasses feature micro-OLED display panels with free-form light-guide prisms that bounce the light off three surfaces before feeding it to the user's eyes. Xiaomi claims a pixels-per-degree resolution of 58, which is reported to be closest in the industry to achieving Retina-level image quality. Brightness doesn't suffer either, at 1,200 nits peak.
The 126-g (4.4-oz) Discovery Edition glasses are not restricted by cumbersome cabled connection to a source device, but – as the name gives away – come with the company's own low-latency wireless communications technology built in, promising input lag on par with wired connections. Or in Xiaomi's words, "as low as 3 ms between the smartphone device to the glasses, and a wireless connection with full link latency as low as 50 ms." The user is also promised easy pairing by simply tapping a smartphone on the arm of the glasses.
Low-power tracking cameras enable AR gesture control with spatial detection for virtual object placement and manipulation, onscreen typing, pinch and zoom, open/close apps, swipe and scroll and more. The setup also appears capable of integrating with smart home gadgetry, with Xiaomi showing a user powering off a table lamp in the introductory video, as well as grabbing a TV show to continue watching through the glasses. And wearers can also opt to control some or all of the onscreen action using a smartphone screen.
Electrochromic lenses out front can black out ambient light for distraction-free immersion in the virtual space, or allow light through to blend digital content with views of the real world.
The wearable is reported compatible with the company's flagship 13 Series handsets, which were launched internationally at MWC, as well as other smartphones capable of supporting Qualcomm's Snapdragon Spaces platform. And the glasses can serve as large-screen entertainment hubs for watching TikTok or YouTube content, too.
The Xiaomi Wireless AR Glasses Discovery Edition rocks Snapdragon XR2 Gen1 brains, is powered by an in-house silicon-oxygen anode battery, sports a material mix of magnesium-lithium alloy and carbon fiber and is titanium colored.
It looks to be a wearable in development or a concept prototype at the moment, with no product release information available at this time.
Source: Xiaomi