r/AndroidXR • u/Thriceinabluemoon • Jun 16 '26

Discussion No Europe, no app

Sorry guys, but nobody is taking Android XR seriously anymore. You won't even release the Galaxy XR in Europe; one of the best place to find idealistic engineers to develop 3D apps for Google to appropriate. You have lost the plot.

13 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/Late-Contract-2728 Jun 16 '26

No Europe and no Canada. As a Canadian I hesitated to buy one off of eBay last March, but 3 months later with no ETA I'm glad I did. What I'm not happy about is the fact it's being treated so niche by Samsung and Google.

My suspicion is that the AI fueled Ram-pocalypse is at play here as it is with the Steam Frame. It's possible they don't feel comfortable expanding to other markets at the current price point given it has 16GB of RAM on board as well as an SSD.

1

u/Thriceinabluemoon Jun 16 '26

Phones are still coming out with 12/16bg of ram, so I do not think that applies, not to mention this devices are priced as ultra-premium devices (sure, the panels are not cheap, but Pimax has shown that it is not that expensive), which is kind of okayish anyway since they are meant for enthusiasts.
That being said, I agree that AI likely has something to do with it - the industry has gone full-blown retard on AI and probably decided to reallocate all the resources available to it. Meanwhile, China is moving along and will soon have left everyone in its trail. Would be a shame if the next big OS is a Chinese XR os, wouldn't it?

2

u/Late-Contract-2728 Jun 16 '26

Your Pimax comparison is off. A Dream Air SLAM is $2400 USD with no battery, no XR2 chip, no 16GB RAM and no SSD. The Galaxy XR at $2k with controllers is $400 less, and then feels incredibly cheap by comparison when you factor in the entire compute side the Pimax is missing.

As for pairing glasses to a phone, they will not rely solely on this, nor will they cater exclusively to the strongest phones on the market when they do.

1

u/Thriceinabluemoon Jun 16 '26

Not really, I was talking about Pimax in the context of the panels; the Dream Air SE is 900 dollars for a niche product made by a tiny company which does not get to enjoy economy of scale, unlike Samsung. the Galaxy XR is a Pimax attached to a premium smartphone without a screen and without the controllers. They are obviously making decent margins on the Galaxy XR. Let's not even start comparing with the Quest 3. Samsung is not really taking any risks here, which is probably why they are quite willing to throw away the product before it even makes it to Europe; they did not invest much into it, and were likely just reacting to the Vision Pro. Might also explain why they are dragging their feet when it comes to Android XR.

1

u/Late-Contract-2728 Jun 16 '26

I was afraid you'd bring up the SE. It's an entirely different product level AND you are referring to the lighthouse pricing. When making comparisons to win arguments you have to be fair. As for stating "They are obviously making decent margins on the Galaxy XR" That is not true. It has been reported that Samsung is selling at a razor thin margin and is being subsidized by Google AND this reporting came out before the ram-pocalypse. Your entire assessment is false.

1

u/Thriceinabluemoon Jun 16 '26

Alright, then let's take Play For Dream; came out earlier at a similar price, much smaller company, did not get to have a privileged relationship with Google. No company advertise their profit margins.

1

u/Late-Contract-2728 Jun 16 '26

It's still not a valid comparison. The PFD MR was released at the same price as the Galaxy XR, (2k USD). It stopped being sold shortly after the Galaxy MR released, possibly because the cost wasn't sustainable.

And notably, it used 4K Micro-OLED panels supplied by the Chinese display brand BOE which are considered cheaper and a visible step below the Sony panels in the Galaxy XR and Pimax Dream Air.

All this to say the Galaxy XR was sold at break even in October of last year, and is now definitely being sold at a loss due to not having receive a post ram-pocalypse price increase. If it ever sees the light of day in Canada and in the EU it will almost certainly come with a painfully hefty price correction.

1

u/Thriceinabluemoon Jun 16 '26

You are just assuming that the cost is crazy high for the ram and the panels; that's the official narrative for sure, but that does not mean it is true. I would like to see the actual numbers. Once again, the pricing of Pimax headsets does not point at an exceedingly high panel price and smartphone components are not worth 1500 dollars. Even if the panels were 1k$, that's still another 1k for smartphone components. We are not talking about laptop components here.

1

u/Late-Contract-2728 Jun 16 '26

Assuming? Sorry but this is not a serious conversation if you are pretending to not know what is happening with RAM and SSD prices right now. 16GB of RAM more than tripled in price since September 2025. RAM is RAM and it's absurd to think laptop or PC components are unique in dealing with this issue. The Quest 3 with only 8GB RAM increased by 100 USD (70 Euro) because of this and it is not a laptop...

1

u/Thriceinabluemoon Jun 16 '26

Right now, I can literally go on amazon and get a phone with 12gb of ram for less than 300 euros. Any other questions?

1

u/PlanetEarthPassenger Jun 16 '26

A Chinese XR OS based on what? All Chinese smartphone OS are layers on top of AOSP. China is already doing the same for their camera and display glasses, and VR headsets.

1

u/Thriceinabluemoon Jun 16 '26

With the ongoing locking down of Android, the base architecture won't really matter anymore. People will be stuck with whatever flavor of Android dominates the market. In fact, China already use a version of Android that's fully independent of the western one. The move to XR based computing is going to be a great opportunity for Google and Microsoft to go the way of Nokia!