I'm sorry but this is crap and could turn off potential buyers. The iPhone does not have the screen resolution and developers don't even have direct access to the hardware to push the CPU's. A phone that is not optimized without any ecosystem for VR is doomed. The bare minimum I would consider is Gear VR which is backed by Oculus. Next would be the big boys such as Oculus or Rift.
Level 1 = Oculus/Rift
Level 2 = Gear VR
Level 5 = Google Cardboard
Google should be announcing something tomorrow at Google I/O but even they said that their offering is on par with Gear VR. It won't even touch the true players. Everybody is trying to get in on the VR cash cow. Seeing how HTC and Oculus are still sold out with units on eBay fetching almost double I can see why.
Too simplistic a view. VR doesn't have to be one single market. Your preference is valid, but there's room for cheap, mobile VR. It's already impressive, fun, and useful even in its infancy, and Google gets full credit from me for launching that end of the market.
I agree, a bigger ecosystem would always be fantastic, and I hope it continues to grow in that direction on all platforms. Anything that gets more people excited about VR helps all of us. No need to set up warring camps yet
But a phone isn't "doomed" if it has fewer music creation apps than another, or fewer pro art apps (if that were true, Android would be doomed). And it isn't "doomed" by its selection of VR apps either.
Nor is it doomed for VR: you pay $15 and you get portability and a limited but growing selection of apps.
Samsung has a branding deal with Oculus, but that won't make Gear remain useful when you change your phone next year.
And iPhone DOES offer direct hardware access (Metal API) unlike Samsung.
What could and does turn people off is bad, slow apps. Like the Zombie game that runs great on Android but is a rerribly laggy port on iOS. That's bad software—not the iPhone's lack of graphics power. (Quite the reverse.)
And don't make the mistake of putting specs ahead of experience. Samsung's supposed high-res displays have always cheated using Pentile and related matrices instead of full pixels, leaving a visible grid much larger than the supposed "pixels," while still burning GPU power processing them the same as actual RGB pixels (worst of both worlds):
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Gala...reveals-Diamond-Pixels-display-matrix_id68987
So you can see a "screen door" on any device if you look for it. Do you have to? Most of use used laptops with visible pixels our whole lives. We'd rather not, but nor do we pay attention to them all the time.
I assume you've used VR on iPhone and never seen it work well. Bad luck: it can work great. There are plenty of bad apps out there, too, including some that claim to be Cardboard compatible but aren't! I'm sure bad ones exist for Android too. Sadly, we must wade through them for now until reviews and ratings become more ubiquitous.
Samsung having a fixed known list of titles because only one device is supported IS a strength. It's just not that much of a strength for the price and obsolescence... not to mention, of course, that many of us prefer iOS, and wouldn't dream of suffering the problems of Android for the sake of how we use VR from time to time. It's certainly a nice extra when they give it away free, though!
Here's my ranking:
1. The winner(s) that emerge among HTC Vive, Oculus, Sony VR, and future contenders. We can't know the winner(s) yet, but they will be a MUCH better buy than #2.
2. "The rest" of the big boys, which cost so much for early adopters and then fade away.
3. Cardboard and Gear VR and maybe something new from Google soon.
But for price and portability--which IS a kind of power--put #3 on top!
