Samsung announced at its annual developers' conference last year that it has teamed up with Google to bring its ARCore platform to the Galaxy, Galaxy S8+ and the Galaxy Note 8. Samsung decided against fragmenting augmented reality on Android. It could have created its own AR platform for its smartphones but in the interest of reducing fragmentation on what is already an overly fragmented platform, Samsung embraced ARCore.
Samsung has since released a new flagship smartphone and contrary to what many of you might have assumed, the Galaxy S9 ARcore support is yet to arrive. However, the good news is that it's going to arrive in the next few weeks.
Galaxy S9 ARCore support
ARCore is Google's software platform for augmented reality solutions. It can be used to build AR apps that leverage advances in cloud software and device hardware to place digital objects in the real world. Almost 100 apps have now been built using this platform which include a furniture visualizer from IKEA, a virtual bakery from Food Network, YouVisit Campus for virtual college campus vists and many more.
It's an evolution of Google's Project Tango AR platform which was hardware-specific, in that it required an array of depth sensors and cameras to 3D map environments. ARCore doesn't need any of that since it's a software platform and thus brings AR experiences even to less powerful devices. It goes without saying that the list will expand considerably down the line as more developers jump on the AR bandwagon.
As previously mentioned, the Galaxy S9 ARCore support isn't here yet, but it has been confirmed through the ARcore Dever Support Requests thread on GitHub that “Support for the S9 and S9+ will be added in the next release, which should be released in the coming weeks.”
So if we take the company's word for it, then it shouldn't take too long before ARCore is finally supported on the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9+.
Samsung remains committed to augmented reality solutions for its smartphones and is even of the view that AR will go beyond smartphones in the future. The company will continue to grow its community of developers and collaborators to further advance the AR cause.
