I’ve been spending some time in my favorite state, California, and making the most of the access to tech that’s hard to find anywhere else. today I tried the Samsung Galaxy XR at the Google Visitor Center in Mountain View, and it felt like a balanced mix of familiar and new.
Trying a new headset is always a mix of professional curiosity and the part of me that simply loves gadgets. I notice the interaction model, comfort, calibration, and visual language, then immediately compare every tiny choice with years of muscle memory from other devices.
Galaxy XR felt interesting because it was not alien. Pieces reminded me of HoloLens 2, Vision Pro, and the broader Android ecosystem, but the combination still had its own personality. That balance matters. New hardware needs enough familiarity to welcome people in and enough difference to justify asking them to learn something new.
The iris recognition and menu on the right palm reminded me of HoloLens 2, while the interface design leaned closer to Vision Pro. The spatial maps feature stood out the most. I could stand in Mountain View and visit my hometown, Vijayawada, through immersive street view rendering, a surprisingly emotional use of location-based XR.
On the hardware side, the weight balance was noticeably better than Vision Pro. It felt more comfortable and I’ve never developed or used Google XR before, but after this, I definitely want to experiment with it.
Also, I’ll be at Immerse the Bay at Stanford this weekend, super excited about the hackathon!!.
#XR
#SpatialComputing
#GoogleDevelopers
#Innovation
#TechReview
#ImmerseTheBay
#Stanford
#VR
What I remember most is the shift from an idea in my head to something another person could actually touch. Shipping makes the questions sharper, the feedback more honest, and the next version much easier to imagine.