Motorola phone owners will soon be able to wirelessly see and use their device in VR on Quest's Horizon OS.
Announced in a guest appearance by Mark Zuckerberg at Lenovo Tech World 2024, Motorola's Smart Connect app is coming to Horizon OS as a 2D app "in the near future".
Zuckerberg said this will let you "interact with any apps on your phone and a much bigger virtual screen", though only with Motorola phones.
Motorola has around 5% smartphone market share globally and around 10% in the US. That means this news won't impact the majority of people. But those who do own one could find it a useful feature to stay connected in VR.
With visionOS 2, iPhone owners can view their phone in VR in Apple Vision Pro, but they can't control it.
It's unclear whether or not Motorola's solution will support DRM content such as Netflix and Disney+, which would be useful to access downloaded content when offline. You can already view almost any phone in Horizon OS using a USB-C cable via Meta Quest HDMI Link, but it doesn't support the HDCP DRM system.
David Heaney
Zuckerberg also confirmed that Lenovo, Motorola's parent company, is still working on multiple Horizon OS headsets of its own, originally announced back in April.
There's no timeline for when we'll see the first Lenovo Horizon OS headset though, and given there wasn't a tease at Lenovo Tech World 2024 we likely won't see one until 2025 at the earliest.
