ARCore Compatible devices

Question

What are the next Android smartphones to be compatible with ARCore?

Is there a known list of future compatible devices yet? Maybe a general project schedule?

We are about to purchase some units for AR development assessments, at first we thought about trying one of the Tango devices out there (we already had a good experience with Tango), but our current bet is that the ARCore platform will beat it in terms of market share.

Currently, the compatible devices are only:

• Google Pixel
• Samsung Galaxy S8 (the non-plus version)

But obviously, we would prefer to choose from a wider variety (e.g. S8+, G6...)

I know that there is a known hack to make it work on other devices, but it is better to start on the right track with a compatible one while we still can.

Also, is there a way to run ARCore on emulator that connected to webcam? For test purpose.

Answer 1

(I don't think this answer deserves the bounty, and I also don't think you'd get a worthy one any time soon. But let's roll anyway:)

So I did a bit of a research as to why are these the only devices supported. It's a tough question to answer of course, but we can speculate.

I read through the reddit on the subject (among other sources) and it seems that ARCore does not require some special hardware, but it does require a "calibration profile" per each specific set of camera, sensors, and builds. I.E. each device.

I've found this Medium article about what Apple had to do in order to calibrate their own ARKit coupled with some speculation about Google's calibration process.

WOW! Turns out it's a really heavy task. And it seems that Google has chosen these devices specifically because they've already undergone some initial calibration for other purposes. So it's even harder to start the calibration from scratch.

OK... So?

So... There seems to be mixed news here:

The good news is that ARCore does not rely on some fancy new hardware platform with some fancy new standards that are gonna be hard to enforce in an already highly fragmented market.

The bad news is that unless an automatic calibration process is invented, each device SKU needs to undergo a costly, lengthy and manual process. It's very hard to estimate the costs involved, and even harder to estimates the rewards.

Which brings us to where we started: My guess is that device manufacturers will not be quick to jump on the ARCore bandwaggon. Yet.

It seems that it's gonna take some time before you'd get a reliable answer to your question.

Answer 2

The current list of ARCore supported device manufacturers and models can be found here:

developers.google.com/ar/discover#supported_devices