Samsung Partners with Google in Bringing ARCore to Galaxy Devices
Samsung is teaming up with Google in bringing the ARCore platform to its line of Galaxy smartphones and devices. On Oct. 18, the two companies announced their partnership, which intends to unite and give a boost to their efforts in the augmented reality market.
Samsung confirmed the partnership this week at the Samsung Developer Conference in San Francisco, which was also attended by Google's head for VR and AR, Clay Bavor.
"Building upon Samsung's heritage of creating pioneering technology...the company is committed to continuing to advance technologies in AR. Through a partnership with Google, developers will be able to use the ARCore SDK to bring AR to millions of Samsung consumers on the Samsung Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ and Galaxy Note 8," the Korean giant said in a statement.
The partnership will particularly be beneficial to Google's ARCore software platform, which directly competes with Apple's ARKit. Google announced the ARCore earlier this year and described it as a software platform that makes use of new cloud technology and on-device hardware in placing digital objects into the real world.
With Google and Samsung's upcoming partnership, developers will now be able to create ARCore apps in such a way that they will work both on Google Pixel devices and Samsung Galaxy smartphones, as well as the Galaxy S8 and Note 8. Although Samsung was Google's first launch partner for the ARCore when it was tested on the Galaxy S8, the upcoming partnership will be a more formal adoption of the framework and will apply to all Samsung Galaxy devices, not just the S8.
The Samsung Galaxy S8 and Google Pixel were the first devices to support the ARCore during the augmented reality platform's preview period. According to Samsung, the upcoming partnership will extend the use of ARCore to other devices, including the Galaxy s8+, Galaxy Note 8, and Google VR.