Why do you care what is possible (literally) today? Clearly this is meant to steer the direction of the entire android ecosystem in a direction where many android phones will be VR capable. It will (potentially) have massive effects on the actual capabilities of the phones people have in their pockets once they roll over to new ones in the coming years, than had it not been done. To your point about price, the thinking is obviously that the differential cost to go from a non-VR user to a VR user if you are purchasing a cell phone in 2017-2018 will be tens of dollars. Unless daydream capable phones are significantly more expensive (and those additional costs are not going anywhere other than for the VR capabilities), then the price of the headset will be the effective cost to a consumer to be able to gain access to VR.
The reason GearVR exists is because your average android phone cannot perform well enough to provide a good VR experience. It requires specific engineering that would not otherwise be done for the common day to day smartphone use cases. Daydream is meant to be a holistic solution to that problem. I guess it sounds to me like you're disappointed that nobody can wave a magic wand and make current android devices VR capable, but sadly enough it does require better sensors, thermal characteristics, and general graphics performance than what any off the shelf android phone can do today.
There are a lot of ways google could have executed on the idea "how do we try to make mobile VR take off" that would have had major problems. The way they've actually done it to me seems the best of all possible worlds. You can question if mobile VR is a viable avenue to mass market adoption of VR, but if you assume that's a goal worth persuing, then critique daydream from there. For me, it certainly seems to me, based on raw numbers alone, to have the highest potential. But even if it turns out to be a poor concept, I can't imagine a better way to execute on trying to prove if it is than what they've done here.
The reason GearVR exists is because your average android phone cannot perform well enough to provide a good VR experience. It requires specific engineering that would not otherwise be done for the common day to day smartphone use cases. Daydream is meant to be a holistic solution to that problem. I guess it sounds to me like you're disappointed that nobody can wave a magic wand and make current android devices VR capable, but sadly enough it does require better sensors, thermal characteristics, and general graphics performance than what any off the shelf android phone can do today.
There are a lot of ways google could have executed on the idea "how do we try to make mobile VR take off" that would have had major problems. The way they've actually done it to me seems the best of all possible worlds. You can question if mobile VR is a viable avenue to mass market adoption of VR, but if you assume that's a goal worth persuing, then critique daydream from there. For me, it certainly seems to me, based on raw numbers alone, to have the highest potential. But even if it turns out to be a poor concept, I can't imagine a better way to execute on trying to prove if it is than what they've done here.