You’ll soon be able to use your phone in VR

October 18

The Meta Quest 3S and Quest 3 are two of the best VR headset you can buy, and they’ll soon have an interesting new feature that lets you use a Motorola phone without leaving VR. Motorola Smart Connect already lets you mirror your phone to a Windows PC or smart TV. Now, your VR headset is gaining this ability too, but on a huge virtual screen.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the news at Lenovo’s Tech World 2024 event, and also spoke about Meta’s Llama model, as spotted by UploadVR. The model is the basis for Lenovo’s AI Now, a personal agent for laptops that runs on-device without requiring a cloud connection.

Lenovo Tech World 2024 Keynote | Lenovo Innovation Brings Hybrid AI to All (Morning Session)

We don’t yet know if the Smart Connect VR app will have the same features on the Quest as the laptop version. It’s also unclear whether older Meta headsets like the Quest 2 and work-centric Quest Pro will be compatible with the Smart Connect.

On a PC, Smart Connect allows easy sharing of files and media. You can also use your phone as a webcam to improve image quality in video calls. Simplified file sharing would be a nice addition for Quest headsets, but video calls still need avatars. There’s not much value in showing your face with a headset blocking your eyes and nose.

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Motorola Smart Connect mirrors your phone screen on other devices. Motorola

Meta has been working with Lenovo for many years. The companies partnered on the Oculus Rift and Rift S, Meta’s first two VR headsets. There was talk of a Quest Pro 2 partnership with Lenovo, but with the Horizon OS announcement, Meta’s road map changed.

More recently, Meta announced Lenovo and others will create mixed reality headsets that run Horizon OS, making the devices compatible with Quest games and apps. Since Lenovo is a computer manufacturer, it’s most likely it will make VR headsets focused on productivity and media consumption like Apple’s Vision Pro headset.