ARCore for All Brings Google’s New Augmented Reality Platform to Unsupported Devices

We may earn a commission for purchases made using our links.

Google recently announced a new platform called ARCore that enables smartphones without specific cameras and sensors to have fun with augmented reality. Much like Google has hardware requirements for its Daydream platform though, there are some hardware requirements in place for their augmented reality platform as well. However a community developer has figured out a way to get this working on unsupported devices with a new project they’re calling ARCore for All.

We saw the same work done when Google launched Daydream since it required a certain level of hardware to pass the company’s certification tests. Fellow XDA writer Adam Conway even wrote up a detailed step by step guide to show you how to do this for yourself. The thing is, Google puts these limits in place for a reason and it’s generally the same reason why OEMs limit other hardware capabilities for their device. Even if something like this works and performs acceptably, there could have been other reasons it was limited (battery drain, heat generation, specific levels of performance, etc.).

Whatever the reason is though, some of us are willing to lose that tiny bit of performance, or use up more battery life than normal, just so we can try out the new feature for ourselves. This is where the ARCore for All project comes into play because it does exactly that for the enthusiast Android community. The developer was able to get this working thanks to this method on their G955F Galaxy S8+ and while it should work on others, your mileage may vary.

So first up, you need to download and install the APK that is provided here. Since this requires the ARService from Google for it to work, you’ll need to download and install that from here. However, if that ARService application doesn’t install or run properly then you can grab this modified version. We tested this modified ARService application on the OnePlus 5 and it worked for us. Remember though, this is just an early preview of the ARCore program and there could be bugs, crashes, or performance issues while Google is ironing things out.