Samsung has today announced an ‘Unpacked’ event in a teaser that puts both Gear VR and “the Next Galaxy” phone in the spotlight. The event will take place on February 21st in Barcelona, one day ahead of this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC).
Samsung has thrown Gear VR in their 14-second teaser that communicates one thing for certain: VR is cool. But exactly where the mobile VR headset fits in the company’s new unveiling of the Galaxy S7 series phones, we just can’t say.
Last year’s MWC saw both the announcement of the Galaxy S6 series and the second Gear VR Innovator Edition. Although we don’t expect to see a new consumer Gear VR this early in the product’s development cycle (it was released only in November) the company is obviously telegraphing strong support for the mobile headset, which could automatically mean the inclusion of S7 series support.
See Also: Oculus Adds Video Capture Function to Gear VR SDK
That’s a fairly conservative speculation, so now here’s something a little less: Even though specs aren’t out yet on the Galaxy S7 series phones despite some credible rumors of updated internals from Venture Beat, many are expecting only an incremental change in this year’s model. The possibility of a cheap or free bundling of Gear VR in the next S7 could explain the large box seen in the teaser—essentially using the Gear VR headset to sweeten whatever comparatively minor hardware changes they’ve managed to fit in.
Although the guy in the teaser does appear to be looking through a blue tint much like the color of the detachable visor, we’ll be reserving our judgement on anything regarding augmented reality applications for after the event. The possibility of limited inside-out positional tracking would be tremendous for VR— because the guy was shown leaning forward and reaching for the floating cube which something you can’t do with current models—but again, it’s only food for thought.
Samsung’s ‘Unpacked’ event will be broadcast live on the Samsung Mobile YouTube channel, so make sure to mark your calendars for 7PM GMT (click here for local time).
