At the Intersection of Smartphones and Virtual Reality

Your smartphone is the single most important device in VR. It’s the engine for a dam-burst of creativity from Samsung, Avegant, Carl Zeiss, and even Dodocase, that twee-est of Apple case makers. Even Oculus itself has embraced smartphone VR, through Samsung and its Galaxy-compatible Gear VR headset. In fact, it was the Gear VR that convinced programming legend John Carmack to join Oculus in the first place, says Nick DiCarlo, who runs the virtual reality team at Samsung.

“We showed him mobile, and he’s like ‘whoa. Now I have this even bigger vision for that. At GDC this week, Carmack threw his and Oculus’ weight fully behind Gear VR. “The official formal strategy,” he said, “is that Oculus goes big, full consumer [push] on Samsung’s next release cycle.” The emphasis on smartphone VR is not altogether surprising, given that most of the ingredients to turn your phone into a virtual reality wonderland are already there. It probably has a good screen. It almost certainly has enough processing power to show you a movie in virtual reality, or to play a simple VR game. ” The first goal of the VR industry is to just get people to try it. Which smartphone vendors will be among the first to introduce VR features into their smartphone? Surely Apple and Samsung are on the shortlist, however, being a first-mover in this segment may be an emerging smartphone player whose name we do not yet know. Send your pick's to the Smartphone and Tablet Emporium.