Motorola’s “5G Necklace” will allow you to miniaturize VR devices

Despite the increasingly “serious” discussions about metavers, which led to the change of Facebook’s name in Metal, we are still far from virtual reality as we see it in SF movies. Nowadays, to get into virtual reality, you need a pair of big, heavy glasses that are hard to carry and offer a rather limited and hard-to-catch experience for those who are not already passionate about technology. Motorola and US carrier Verizon believe they have found a smarter way to bring more people into VR: the “5G collar”, which will allow virtual reality devices to shrink in size.

Motorola integrates all the essential components of a VR device into a 5G necklace

According to the official announcement, the Motorola 312 research and development lab believes that the future of virtual reality is in the field of wearables, and a necklace equipped with powerful hardware and 5G connectivity could be the answer to some problems that virtual reality currently has.

Basically, in the new necklace there is a powerful processor, a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, along with a 5G modem for high speed internet connection. This necklace could thus be connected to a pair of AR, VR glasses or a “mixed” device, which allows both use cases. Thus, the VR device becomes a simple accessory, a relationship similar to that of a monitor to a desktop PC. The device is equipped with a 5,000 mAh battery, a USB port, a DisplayPort 1.4 and a touch surface. The whole device weighs only 100 grams.

By removing batteries and high-power electronics from AR and VR devices, their size can be reduced, and with them weight. That way, you’ll be able to have a VR device with you at all times, probably in a pair of glasses. Currently, it is compatible with Lenovo’s ThinkReality A3 glasses.

Currently, the necklace is designed for use in the “corporate” space and in public spaces, where there is already implementation of VR or AR devices such as those from Meta, HoloLens from Microsoft or Vive from HTC. Motorola and Verizon say we will see a greater presence of these devices in physical stores, in particular. More and more companies are likely to start offering VR “experiences” for marketing purposes with these devices in the near future.

source: Motorola