I spent the weekend installing more APKs onto the Samsung Galaxy XR headset from the open web than from Google Play.
I used the flatscreen version of Steam Link as downloaded from the web and ran a flatscreen Android fork of the open-source version of Tilt Brush. I found Reddit threads from Google searches taking me to GitHub pages with experimental APKs to install for controlling wired accessories.
I filed a bug report with one of the biggest VR developers over their game’s controller integration and asked another if their Daydream game would be supported. And I mini golfed in Walkabout.
David Heaney
One of my first realizations was just how quiet the universe was before Gmail was installed directly on my headset, dinging from somewhere out of sight with each new message. Amalthea around Jupiter in Apple Vision Pro is peaceful without a Gmail app in headset because I only access my Gmail within Safari. It is all I need when the service pings my iPhone all the time with a singular notification.
On Friday, some of those dings in Android XR were from VR developers sending me Google Play codes or responding to my bug reports. I copied and pasted the codes to the Play Store to try hand tracking in apps like Cubism and Demeo and Job Simulator. My phone wasn’t required at any time.
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I found the passthrough portal in the Labs area of the Android XR settings and placed it over my desk, functioning like Horizon Workrooms but across the entire operating system. I turned off passthrough portal for most of the weekend to focus on capturing pure virtual media with the headset.
Galaxy XR’s open periphery design helped me see my mouse, keyboard and gamepad. The keyboard is where I started to feel some differences in Android from visionOS. From the moment I connected the keyboard to Android XR, and because of its hard strap design keeping me near a desk, I never felt compelled to input text via in-air keyboard or voice dictation. I used the keyboard for practically everything involving text.
On Vision Pro, Mac Virtual Display can forward a MacBook’s inputs to the headset, effectively commanding two devices at once. With Android XR, I didn’t feel the need to connect to a Mac to type emails, or to a PC to find interesting apps or places to visit. I also didn’t feel the need to use my phone at all. Everything I needed to do my work was in the headset, oriented around Google’s services. I missed nothing of the Horizon OS experience and felt free of it.
A Logitech keyboard under my fingers also untethered me from the Apple ecosystem. In visionOS, I often find myself helped by a nearby Mac doing some of the work. I trust a keyboard more than voice dictation in general and, when the only keyboard nearby is the one with a Mac attached to it, then taken altogether, an Android headset plus keyboard has some subtle but important benefits. One being that it is always there to use without a second display to deal with.
The video I’ve embedded below was captured in headset, trimmed by an app inside Android XR and uploaded directly to this page using keyboard and mouse. In Vision Pro, the same video would need to be renamed with a different extension (more easily done on Mac) in order for it to flow here.
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Even though I meet my coworker in VR with a Quest headset for about three hours a week, recording the VR Download as we do, I refuse to do my writing or editing work in a Quest headset. I’ve tried, but logging into my Google accounts in the Quest browser doesn’t do exactly the same thing as logging in at the system level to Android XR.
In no time, my headset was feeding videos I captured in VR into the Google Photos app already logged in on my iPhone, with full trimming controls for captured videos on either device before moving it further along in production. With Android XR, my first 8 minutes of Google Maps usage is already on YouTube and it was effortless to cut portions for articles.
I disconnected the keyboard from the headset after days of use to try voice transcription for the first time, gamepad in hand controlling a Steam Deck in my partner’s hands as it streamed its view to Steam Link in my headset. In one window, I spoke dictation tests into Bluesky and in the other I read the tiny text of my cards in my digital board game on Steam. Once I got the hang of two windows, I booted up Pacific Rim on Netflix in a third window and watched Charlie Day talk about his mind-meld with a kaiju at better quality, to my eyes, than I could get if I turned on the Samsung Frame TV on the wall.
It is about here that I started to recalculate the way I’ve divvied up my device usage.
Work vs Personal
Apple Vision Pro has been my go-to headset for almost two years because it is supported by great iPad apps, with some notable Google exceptions. My phone carries my cellular connection and my most vital notifications flow through it. Exactly where does “the office” end and “away from keyboard” begin when the most effective workplace is sitting in a headset on the desk?
Setting Do Not Disturb on headset can quiet a space in VR, but depending on your phone provider, other settings might need to be changed to focus on your time in headset. I got more done in less time with Android XR than Apple because of its tight integration with all the same Google services I use at work.
Instead of depending on a Mac to help lift the weight of some computing tasks, including interfacing with Google, or an iPhone to do the quick tasks, I had one installation of Android with endless screen space available to it for Google’s use, as well as sideloading and a USB port to explore.
I haven’t used a traditional computer at all, nor a phone, to capture hours of video, publish minutes of it, and type out three complete articles into a Web browser. I would have leaned on Mac Virtual Display for tasks like Gmail or video trimming in Vision Pro doing the same tasks.
Android XR redefines Apple’s trademark phrase from the iPhone era. “There’s an app for that” is what Apple used to say to market its iOS app dominance. After one weekend of sideloading APKs from the open web with all modes of input available to each of them directly in my headset, it’s clear Google hasn’t just opened the gates to app development and distribution here. Google knocked down the walls entirely.
My last moments in Android XR before handing the headset to Agile Lens, which lent it to UploadVR for testing, were in Half-Life: Alyx streaming over Virtual Desktop wirelessly at 90 frames per second. I walked from one end of a gigantic empty room — the New York holodeck — immersed entirely in virtual reality with no boundary. I even lay down in VR there, enabled entirely by Steam, Google, and Guy Godin.
