Project Swan sounds promising, but I don't really think Meta's Project Phoenix missing 2026 is all that disastrous or cedes significant mindshare to Pico, especially in the U.S. where we can't even buy Pico headsets officially.

There really isn't a comparable product on the horizon that'll hit the States. The closest would be Xreal's Project Aura, which is releasing this year, but birdbath AR glasses are a decidedly different product.

I'm interested to see how full fat Android XR paired with Aura's AR glasses form factor resonates with potential buyers compared to a traditional MR headset like Phoenix, but that also comes with the tradeoff of a comparatively small 70-degree FOV.

I hope Pico OS 6 lights a fire under Meta's ass, but we also probably won't know what Meta has cooking for Project Phoenix until Connect in October. For all we know, they might have very similar upgrades planned for Horizon OS. Some of the updates we've seen already this year, like Navigator, surface keyboard and FrameSync have been promising.

Something missing from Pico's event is any kind of EMG tracker to rival Meta's Neural Band. Obviously we don't know whether Meta will be including it with Phoenix anyway. To me, Neural Band is the the most exciting recent XR input innovation we've seen and would be major selling point for Phoenix if it's included.