Vive Focus Plus Doesn’t Feel Quite Ready For Prime Time

I got to HTC Vive’s booth at 10am on the first morning of Mobile World Congress. My first order of the day was an interview with General Manager Dan O’Brien, which took me to around 10:45am. Then I got my hands on HTC’s 5G demo, which used a Vive Focus Plus to stream PC VR. It was now 11am. The booth had been open for two hours. I was ready to go in search of more Focus Plus demos.The problem is, they were all out of batteries. All three of them.I had some pretty conflicting experiences with HTC’s new standalone headset at MWC. The trouble is it’s tough to know whether this speaks more to the quality of the headset or the difficulties of demoing inside-out tracking on a busy show floor. My 5G demo, for instance, seemed quite positive at first glance. As I wrote about in my preview earlier this week, streaming over HTC’s 5G hub added on some noticeable latency, but tracking overall seemed solid. The redesigned headset, meanwhile, was comfortable to wear. According to HTC, Focus Plus also features improved optics. It was hard to see much difference without the old model right next to me. It felt around the same quality as a Vive Pro, either way.My experience was considerably worse in my other demo, though. Around 20 minutes after finding out all the headset’s batteries were flat I returned to find medical company SimforHealth with a fresh device. The company was showing a medical training app that teaches nurses to change dressings when in a patient’s home.