Samsung and Google have announced a partnership surrounding ARCore, bringing Google’s Android augmented reality development toolkit to the South Korean manufacturer’s high-end line of Galaxy smartphones.
Google’s recently announced ARCore, which is the successor to the tech giant’s now basically defunct Project Tango, is in direct competition with Apple’s mobile augmented reality platform ARKit.
Huge news: Samsung is adopting Google’s ARCore on Galaxy S8/Note8 rather than fragmenting Android AR.
— Avi Greengart (@greengart) October 18, 2017
Now, developers will be able to design ARCore apps that are compatible with both Google Pixel devices and Samsung’s Galaxy line, including the S8 and Note 8, expanding the reach of the development platform significantly. Samsung was listed as an initial ARCore partner, but this new announcement means that the South Korean tech giant will adopt Google’s AR framework for all future devices.
Announced back in August, ARCore is an evolution of Google’s Project Tango in some respects. While it’s a step backwards when it comes to performance and accuracy, ARCore works on a wider range of devices than Tango, which was only supported by the ZenFone AR and Lenovo Phab 2 Pro.
Given Samsung’s insistence on pushing forward with its own proprietary platform when it comes to virtual reality, rather than adopting Google’s growing Daydream, it’s a welcome shift to see the company making an effort to avoid splintering the burgeoning mobile augmented reality industry.
Currently, ARCore is just available to developers and only works on Pixel devices running Android 7.0 Nougat devices and above. Google is targeting 100 million users by the end of the augmented reality platform’s preview period, with manufacturers like Huawei, LG and Asus hopefully also jumping on board at some point, according to the tech giant.
ARKit on the other hand, publicly launched when Apple rolled out iOS 11. Though the development kit has only been available for a few weeks, a number of developers have already released AR apps that utilize the iOS development tool.
Via: The Verge
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