Although Project Tango crashed and burned, its successor, Google ARCore, has been thriving. Already available on a wide range of popular devices including the Google Pixel series, the Samsung Galaxy S8/S8+/Note 8, the OnePlus 5, the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2S, and more, the service brings augmented reality apps to millions of users worldwide. The service shows great promise in the realm of online shopping, with many retailers such as Amazon and eBay announcing augmented reality features in their mobile apps.
Google promised that ARCore could expand to additional devices from Samsung, Huawei, LG, Motorola, ASUS, Xiaomi, HMD Global, ZTE, Sony, and Vivo in the coming weeks and months. The company formally announced that the Samsung Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, LG V30/V30+ (on Oreo), and ASUS Zenfone AR would receive support for ARCore. Now it appears that the latest version of ARCore (1.1) hints at support for the Huawei P20, Google Nexus 6P, Motorola Moto Z2 Force, and more.
An APK teardown can often predict features that may arrive in a future update of an application, but it is possible that any of the features we mention here may not make it in a future release. This is because these features are currently unimplemented in the live build and may be pulled at any time by Google in a future build.
ARCore Support for the Huawei P20, Google Nexus 6P, Moto Z2 Force, and more
We decompiled the latest version of the app rolling out today on the Google Play Store. There aren’t any new strings to look at, but within the device profile database folder are several new device profiles for devices. The new devices listed here (under their code-names) include the following:
- Google Nexus 6P
- Huawei P20
- Huawei P20 Pro
- Huawei Porsche Design Mate RS
- Motorola Moto Z2 Force
- Samsung Galaxy A5 2017
- Samsung Galaxy A7 2017
The Samsung Galaxy s9 and Galaxy S9+ are also listed under several of their code-names, however those devices were previously confirmed to receive support for the service.
We’re a bit skeptical of the Nexus 6P properly supporting the service given how intensive it can be, so it’s possible that ARCore support is only listed here for testing purposes. If the last Nexus flagship does indeed receive support for augmented reality apps (and not just a hacked version of the Google Camera app with AR Sticker support) we’ll be sure to let you know.