Traditionally you only need a boss that doesn’t pay attention on what you do in Daydream, but Google wants you to have a display between 4.7 and 6 inches with a resolution of at least 1080p 60Hz display. These phones need to have a 3ms or less latency and 5ms or less persistence. Quad HD 2560x1440 or higher resolution is recommended.
If six inches is the maximum, we wonder if the Daydream will make an adjustment to work on Xiaomi Mi Max and the highly anticipated and sold out in a minute, bezel-less Xiaomi Mi Mix. Both of them have 6.44 inch screen. The Google document is pretty clear, it says: “The display MUST measure between 4.7" and 6" diagonal.”
Daydream needs a GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.2 and Vulkan that is able to decode two instances of 60fps video simultaneously and can offer consistent 60 FPS rendering. Google also requires a temperature sensors to read the device surface temperature as the company doesn’t necessarily want to set your face on fire. Just to remind you, you need to wear Daydream VR slot-in glasses with your phone on your face.
The device must have at least two physical cores, MUST support sustained performance mode, MUST support H.264 decoding at least 3840x2160@30fps- 40Mbps (equivalent to 4 instances of 1920x1080@30fps-10Mbps or 2 instances of 1920x1080@60fps-20Mbps), MUST support HEVC and VP9, MUST be capable to decode at least 1920x1080@30fps-10Mbps and SHOULD be capable to decode 3840x2160@30fps- 20Mbps (equivalent to 4 instances of 1920x1080@30fps-5Mbps). Google used ALL CAPS to make it clear that it is not kidding about the requirements.
Google Pixel is officially the first phone supporting Daydream and Daydream VR but it looks like most high end phones updated to Android 7.0 should work too. They MUST meet the requirements above.
Bear in mind that apart from the Pixel and the Pixel XL by Google the only phone having the Android 7.1 that we are aware of, the Huawei Mate 9 with 5.9-inch display and 1080p that qualify this phone to work with Daydream. Android 7 aka Nougat will come to more phones but as usual, Google and its partners are extremely slow to migrate to a new Android, a wound that won’t heal for Android OS anytime soon.
Google’s Daydream VR is on pre-orders for $79 and if that sounds like a good price, bear in mind that Xiaomi has its own Xiaomi slot-in VR glasses selling for $12.29 but it doesn’t come with the Daydream remote.
