Samsung Gear VR

The Oculus-powered headset you snapped a Galaxy into, retired when standalone VR arrived

Shut down
19902026

The Samsung Gear VR was a headset that turned a Galaxy phone into a virtual reality display, developed with Oculus and sold from December 2014 as an "Innovator Edition" and from November 2015 as a $99 consumer product. Five million shipped by early 2017, many bundled free with phones. Standalone headsets made it redundant; Samsung's 2019 phones dropped support and its XR service closed on 30 September 2020.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2014
  2. 3 September 2014 Feature
    Announced with the Galaxy Note 4

    "Powered by Oculus."

  3. 8 December 2014 Launch
    Innovator Edition ships

    $199, for developers and the curious.

  4. 2015
  5. 20 November 2015 Launch
    The $99 consumer Gear VR

    The first mass-market VR headset that was actually good.

  6. 2016
  7. 11 October 2016 Incident
    Disabled for the Note 7

    Samsung and Oculus switch off VR for the recalled phone.

  8. 2017
  9. 5 January 2017 Peak
    Five million shipped

    Mostly bundled with Galaxy phones.

  10. 2018
  11. 1 May 2018 Decline
    Oculus Go

    Oculus's own standalone headset makes phone VR redundant.

  12. 2019
  13. 7 August 2019 Decline
    The Note 10 drops support

    Samsung's new flagships no longer work with Gear VR.

  14. 2020
  15. 11 May 2020 Shutdown announced
    Samsung XR is ending

    The headset's video service closes on 30 September.

  16. 30 September 2020 Shutdown
    End of service

    Samsung XR closes; the headset is left with what remains on the Oculus store.

The site through time

Browse samsung.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Samsung (with Oculus VR) 2014–2020 Founded Hardware by Samsung, software and store by Oculus, later Facebook

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Standalone headsets, first Oculus Go in 2018 and then Quest in 2019, made a phone-in-a-visor design pointless. Samsung's 2019 flagships did not support Gear VR, Facebook stopped taking new Gear VR apps, and on 11 May 2020 Samsung announced the end of its XR video service; it closed on 30 September 2020, taking the headset's content platform with it.

Our analysis: Gear VR was the first mass-market VR headset that was actually good, because Oculus wrote the software and Samsung had the screens, and it sold in the millions mostly as a bundle nobody asked for with a new phone. Phone VR was always a stopgap: the phone overheated, the battery drained, and the moment Oculus could put the same experience in a $199 box with its own chip, its partner's headset was obsolete.

History [edit]

Oculus inside

Samsung announced Gear VR on 3 September 2014 alongside the Galaxy Note 4, "powered by Oculus": John Carmack's team had written the software and the low-latency tracking, and Samsung supplied a plastic visor with lenses, a touchpad on the side, and a slot for the phone that became the screen and the computer. The Innovator Edition shipped on 8 December 2014 for $199, for developers and enthusiasts, and a $99 consumer version for the Galaxy S6 and Note 5 followed on 20 November 2015. It was, for the price and the era, remarkable: no wires, no PC, and a store of Oculus-curated games and 360-degree video.

Samsung pushed it hard. Gear VR came free with pre-orders of the Galaxy S7 in 2016, which is how it reached its numbers: Oculus said in January 2017 that five million had shipped. A 2017 model added a motion controller. The headset was also the centre of one of the stranger episodes of the Note 7 recall: on 11 October 2016 Samsung and Oculus remotely disabled Gear VR for the exploding phone, so nobody would strap one to their face.

Standalone

Then Oculus built its own. The Oculus Go of May 2018, made with Xiaomi, put a Gear VR-class experience in a $199 headset with its own chip and no phone, and the Quest of 2019 went further. Samsung's Galaxy S10 was the last flagship to support Gear VR; the Note 10 of August 2019 did not, and Facebook stopped accepting new Gear VR apps that year. On 11 May 2020 Samsung announced the end of Samsung XR, its 360-degree video service and apps, effective 30 September 2020, and Samsung's own support page now describes it as an end of service for both Gear VR and XR. Existing headsets still work with old phones and whatever content remains on the Oculus store, which is less every year.

The domain today

samsung.com carries an "End of service for Gear VR and Samsung XR" support page. The headset itself has not been sold new since 2019.

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Zune Microsoft's answer to the iPod, five years late 2006–2015 iPod 1,000 songs in your pocket 2001–2022 HP TouchPad Killed 49 days after launch 2011–2011 Google Glass The face computer the public rejected 2013–2023 Microsoft Kin Dead in 48 days 2010–2011 Pebble The smartwatch Kickstarter built, and Fitbit buried 2013–2018

Sources [edit]

  1. Samsung unveils Gear VR Eurogamer 3 September 2014 [archived]
  2. Samsung Gear VR 2016 review: more of the same great portable VR Ars Technica 19 August 2016 [archived]
  3. Oculus disables Gear VR support for the Galaxy Note 7 The Verge 11 October 2016 [archived]
  4. Samsung is killing its VR applications now that Gear VR is dead Engadget 12 May 2020 [archived]
  5. End of service for Gear VR and Samsung XR Samsung 30 September 2020 [archived]

Last verified: 15 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).