Surprisingly this week I read a report by 9to5Mac's Ben Lovejoy titled "The Five Reasons I hardly use an iPad anymore." Lovejoy listed his reasoning for basically dropping the use of iPads, but the bottom line is that he now uses VR Glasses by Viture. Although it was difficult to assess whether this was a paid-for-ad or not, Lovejoy's reasoning for the switch would seem to be geniune. You could read his full story here. A Part of Virtue's marketing states: "The Most Seamless Way to Watch Apple's Spatial Video!"

While Apple has a multitude of smart glasses patents on record, it would appear, at least on paper, that Apple is aiming for a higher-end XR experience; one that would support in-air gestures similar to Vision Pro and so forth. Yet Apple could, if it so chose to, enter the market with an iPhone accessory simply watching videos, movies or TV programs like Lovejoy is using. For now, however, Apple doesn't want to distract from promoting Vision Pro.

Will this current trend of video/movie/gaming glasses be of interest to Apple? Perhaps, but not anytime soon.

In the meantime, Samsung continues to file patents for smart glasses in the hopes of beating Apple to market and support their Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets.

One of Samsung's  latest smart glasses patents covers the glasses and a charging case. Below is patent FIG. 6 which provides a basic overview of the glasses whereas FIG. 2 further below provides a full overview of the parts included in the device; FIG. 4B is a plan view schematically illustrating an internal configuration in a state in which a wearable electronic device is unfolded.

Samsung's patent FIG. 7B below is a front view illustrating a case; FIG. 7C is a front view illustrating a state in which the smart glasses are charging in a case.

Adroid and/or Samsung fans could dive into the details of this invention covered in European patent application WO/2024/048937 that was published on March 7, 2024. For those interested in the topic in general, you could also check out some of Apple's smart glasses patents here.