Samsung's Galaxy XR Mixed Reality Headset Undercuts Apple's Vision Pro by $1,700 This Android XR-powered headset comes with Google's Gemini assistant and once again asks you to step into virtual waters. It has been five years since Samsung and Google stopped supporting their respective mobile virtual reality headsets . For a second try, the companies have partnered up with a bolder vision in the mixed reality space, starting with the new Galaxy XR. Announced last year as Project Moohan, it's the first headset powered by Android XR, a new platform for smart glasses and headsets built on Android and Google's Gemini assistant from the ground up. The Galaxy XR is available today in the US and South Korea for $1,800.

It's been just over a year since the launch of ChatGPT sent the world AI-crazy. So it's no surprise that tech giants now want to integrate and promote the artificial intelligence capabilities in all their new gadgets - from laptops to TVs. But it's smartphones that look set to be one of the biggest AI battlegrounds. Apple's next iPhone is heavily rumored to have loads of new AI-powered features. Samsung and Google have also gone all-in on AI in phones, with their latest S24 Ultra and Pixel 8 Pro (out this year and late last year respectively) both being marketed heavily on their AI capabilities.

Following the official release of the Matter protocol earlier this month, today at its annual developer conference Samsung announced a deeper partnership with Google to make it easier for consumers to set up their smart home devices. Currently, users are often forced to choose between a specific smart home platform like Samsung's SmartThings or the Google Home app, and trying to get these systems to work with each other can often be quite difficult. Additionally, some devices are only supported on one (but not both) platforms, which means you have to switch between ecosystems to manage all of your gadgets. But in the future, thanks in part to Matter's multi-admin capabilities, Samsung says it's looking to streamline the smart home device onboarding process. For example, for SmartThing users, Samsung claims the app will notify users when it detects devices that have been already set up in the Google Home app and will then provide a simple way of syncing those devices in SmartThings (or vice versa).

Competition may be good for the soul, but so is collaboration. Samsung said at an earnings call earlier Wednesday that working with its often-partner, sometimes-rival Google will make artificial intelligence better on a range of devices. "Samsung and Google will have to continue to maintain their strategic partnership to nurture the AI and the market for the emerging technology," Samsung Mobile VP Lee Kyeong-tae said, as reported by The Investor, a South Korean publication associated with The Korea Herald. The call to collaborate comes at a time when Samsung is rumored to bring the AI assistant "Bixby" to its Galaxy S8 phone this April. The use of AI is heating up on phones, with phonemakers from Huawei to HTC introducing their own takes.

Late last year, I lamented that Google didn't make Chromebooks a priority over the holiday season. With Android apps and the Google Play Store coming to the platform, it seemed like a perfect time to push Chrome OS. As this morning's leak showed, I just needed to wait another month: Samsung and Google have just announced the Chromebook Plus and Chromebook Pro, a pair of laptops that strive to present the best Chrome OS experience a user can have. Let's get the difference between the two models out of the way early: The cheaper Chromebook Plus uses an ARM processor while the Chromebook Pro features an Intel Core M3 processor. Neither is the most powerful out there, but in my quick tests, the Chromebook Pro seemed plenty snappy. I will note that an ARM processor is probably never going to provide the best Chromebook experience one can have, but I'll grudgingly reserve judgement until really testing it out.