ByteDance has trademarked Pico 4S, and icons depicting its controllers were found in the Pico software.
The 'Pico 4S' trademark, brought to our attention by VR enthusiast Luna, was filed with the China National Intellectual Property Administration.
Separately, a user on a Chinese VR forum posted screenshots of a folder of the Pico Connect PC VR streaming software version 10.0 showing a new 'icons_4s' folder. This folder contains icons for a ringless controller design. It wasn't present in previous versions of the software, and has been removed in version 10.0.24.
David Heaney
Back in September images leaked on Chinese social media showing ringless Pico controllers, which appear to have the same design as these new icons found in the software.
The trademark and icons come after The Information reported in December that Pico 5 was canceled because Pico 4 sales "fell far short of ByteDance’s expectations". That same report said ByteDance does plan to release a refreshed version of Pico 4, seemingly referring to this Pico 4S, but didn't give any detail of what changes it will bring.
David Heaney
As well as the new ringless controllers, it seems likely that Pico 4S will feature the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset used in Quest 3, instead of the original XR2 chip used in the current Pico 4 and Quest 2.
As for what other changes the new headset will have, it will depend on ByteDance's priorities. Given it was disappointed with Pico 4 sales, it may want to cut costs to compete with the rumored Quest 3 Lite. Alternatively, it may want to convince existing Pico 4 owners to upgrade. Regardless, the name 4S, rather than 5, suggests relatively minimal fundamental changes. It might even just be a chip and controllers upgrade, with no significant changes to the design.
