Apple Glass may not arrive until 2023 at the earliest, but Qualcomm is trying to help Apple's rivals get ahead of the wearables juggernaut

Qualcomm has unveiled its new Snapdragon XR1 AR Smart Viewer reference design The design is intended to help AR glasses manufacturers deliver a "high-quality, immersive experience" while reducing the time to market for their products

According to a Qualcomm press release, the new AR Smart Viewer can be tethered to a smartphone, Windows PC, or processing pack Targeted at businesses and consumers, the Smart Viewer promises many use cases

For example, Smart Viewer can render multiple virtual displays at once and can be tethered to a PC to increase productivity It can also run multiple smartphone applications on its own virtual display that can be pinned to the user's environment The glasses can also stream premium movies

The Smart Viewer also includes a number of cameras, starting with support for an 8MB RGB camera with image stabilization The idea is to provide a hands-free "what you see is what you get" scenario, useful for telephone support, training, and education

In addition, the Smart Viewer has dual monochrome cameras that provide six degrees of freedom for head and hand tracking and gesture recognition

Microsoft, Lenovo, and Nreal are just some of the partners in this reference design mentioned in Qualcomm's press release However, there are no plans as to when AR glasses using this reference design will hit the market

Qualcomm's design itself uses a mico-OLED display provided by BOE, and the frame rate scales up to 90Hz to reduce motion blur Qualcomm states that the smart viewer hardware developed by Goertek will enable manufacturers to "rapidly scale and develop smart AR devices for commercial use"

According to Qualcomm, reference designs for the smart viewer are currently available for select partners