HTC Teases a New Small Headset
HTC’s Twitter account has got many industry observers guessing after teasing what it says is a new headset with the caption “Go small or go home”.
HTC’s Twitter account tweeted the image on October 6th. The image provides only a small glimpse of the small headset and it is impossible to make out what the rest of it looks like.
Go small or go home. pic.twitter.com/PUqqKn4V5E
— HTC VIVE (@htcvive) October 6, 2022
The image is accompanied by the text “Go small or go home” suggesting that the company is planning to release a new and slim virtual reality headset that could be a successor to the HTC Vive Flow.
HTC has also confirmed that the teaser is indeed for a new virtual reality headset. The company will release additional information soon. The wording talks of a “headset” and does not specifically mention virtual reality.
Some have speculated that the HTC device could be a successor to its Vive Flow headset.
HTC also released a mail mentioning an “eventful time” since the release of its Vive Flow headset 12 months ago. The talk mentions that when it was released, it was the company’s first evolution of the Photon project that aimed to create a lightweight and immersive XR headset that was launched in early 2020.
During its unveiling, HTC explicitly described Proton as mixed reality glasses that had 5G support. However, the company’s Vive Flow doesn’t provide an AR mode.
Augmented reality functionality, through video passthrough, could be an important feature in HTC’s new device, just like in Meta Quest Pro and ByteDance’s Pico 4 headsets. The Quest Pro headset will be presented at the Meta Connect conference on Tuesday, October 11.
HTC’s latest hardware releases also pack some technologies that could find their way into the new hardware. For instance, HTC has mentioned its Wrist Tracker as the first “inside-out tacker for an all-in-one headset” along with 5G streaming among others.
In its latest mail communication, HTC says that it showcased its new private 5G solution, the G-Reign, which streams PC VR experiences to the VIVE FOCUS 3 headset via a superfast wireless network.
HTC says it has since expanded its VIVE Focus 3 ecosystem and included eye and facial trackers. The mail quips that its demands are about to get smaller, hinting that it is about to unveil a smaller headset.
From the tweet and mail, it looks like HTC is about to focus on miniaturizing its headsets to a degree that will be smaller than its current competition which includes Meta Quest 2 and Pico 4. Both Meta and Pico devices are smaller and slimmer than the previous generation of models but they are still quite clunky as wearables.
The Vive Flow headset has mostly had negative reviews in spite of the small form factor. In spite of its compactness, the device is still relatively huge and is not the ideal form factor that many consumers would be looking for. For the money, it still offers little function. A business version of the Vive Flow was launched in June 2022.
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