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Smart Glasses

Xiaomi Unveils Consumer Smart Glasses with 50 MP Camera & Micro OLED Display

August 1, 2022 From roadtovr

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi today unveiled a pair of smart glasses that the company is positioning as an addition to an active lifestyle, targeting consumers at 2,499 yuan (~$370).

Called Mijia Glasses Camera, the Google Glass-style device features a single display and two cameras: a 50 MP primary and 8 MP periscope camera, something the company says is capable of up to 15× zoom and 100 minutes of continuous recording.

According to Sparrow News, the smart glasses house a single Micro OLED from Sony which boasts up to 3,000 nit peak brightness and 3,281 ppi. The camera/display upper can also be clipped to a pair of glasses frames or worn by itself.

Image courtesy Sparrow News, Xiaomi

The glasses are driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8-core chipset, and includes 3GB RAM, 32GB storage, dual Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 5.0. An internal 1,020mAh battery is paired with magnetic 10W charging, which the company says can go from 0-80% charge in 30 minutes.

The company is positioning the device mostly as a pair of camera glasses for capturing daily activities, although it’s hard to deny that the awkward and large form factor will make it difficult for all-day wear.

The spot doesn’t really seem to focus on what the heads-up display (HUD) brings to the table, although the company says in marketing info that the device is capable of real-time translation, displaying “AR effects”, screencasting, and “other features will also be online in the subsequent OTA update,” Sparrow News reports.

Xiaomi is first targeting consumers in China with discounted pre-orders, priced 2,499 yuan (~$370). After the pre-order period, which is slated to begin on August 3rd, the device will sell for 2,699 yuan (~$400).

It’s uncertain whether the Xiaomi is going to market Mijia Glasses Camera outside of China, although the Chinese tech powerhouse is certainly ambitious enough to do so eventually. While not a household brand in North America, Xiaomi is a top 5 global smartphone manufacturer, offering its competitively spec’d array of handsets in Europe and most of Asia.

Still, there’s no denying the glasses are significantly more chunky in comparison to the future smart glasses concept the company teased earlier this year (see below), which was closer to the size of actual glasses. It’s certainly less discrete than Meta’s Ray-Ban Stories, which admittedly don’t include a display of any sort and only allow for 30-second recording sessions with a comparatively paltry 5 MP sensor.

Update (August 2nd, 2022): We’ve added in the exact model name, translated from Chinese to give more accuracy to the article, whereas before only the sub-brand ‘Mijia’ was mentioned.

Filed Under: mijia, News, Smart Glasses, xiaomi, xiaomi ar, xiaomi mijia, xiaomi smart glasses, xiaomi smartglasses

Xiaomi Unveils Smart Glasses Vision Featuring MicroLED Waveguides

September 14, 2021 From vrfocus

Xiaomi is one of China’s leading technology companies, previously partnering with Facebook during the Oculus Go era to create the Mi VR Standalone for its home market. Today, the company has teased plans for a future entry into the smart glasses market, a very compact looking device brimming with tech.  

Xiaomi Smart Glasses

Simply called Xiaomi Smart Glasses, the device is being designed as an augmented reality (AR) system that can connect to a smartphone to display key information like calls and messages. Crucially, Xiaomi also notes that the smart glasses won’t just function as a second screen, it’ll have independent functionality to make it a true smart wearable supposedly.

The core component of the (very thin looking) Xiaomi Smart Glasses is its microLED optical waveguide technology, allowing for a compact, monochrome (green) display solution with a peak brightness of 2 million nits. The information displayed won’t be in 3D, however, as the waveguide only features on the right side of the glasses, on the other are components including the camera.

Xiaomi claims the smart glasses “integrates a total of 497 components including miniature sensors and communication modules,” powered by a quad-core ARM processor. Those modules include a touch pad and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth, all weighing in at a respectable 51g. Then there’s the built-in dual beamforming microphone and speaker to take calls. And let’s not forget the 5MP camera that can be used for taking pictures as well as services like translating text.

Xiaomi Smart Glasses

When it comes to all those software options Xiaomi plans on ensuring the glasses are feature-rich. Apart from getting those basic notifications off your phone, the device can be used for navigation on its own, you can tap the side to take a pic or use the glasses hands-free with the XiaoAi AI Assistant – the company envisions this as the primary interaction method.

Sound too good to be true considering others like Nreal Light and Rokid still have to cable to a smartphone, whilst Facebook’s new Ray-Ban Stories isn’t even AR? While the spec roster of the Xiaomi Smart Glasses is impressive, the announcement is missing crucial details such as the battery life, the actual ARM processor and when the company plans on making it available.

The announcement could be to get the jump on Apple which is holding a press event later today, widely expected to feature an AR component considering some of the PR teasing that’s been going on. When further details have been made available regarding Xiaomi and Apple’s AR plans, VRFocus will let you know.

Filed Under: News, Smart Glasses, xiaomi, xiaomi smart glasses

Xiaomi Teases Smart Glasses Concept with MicroLED Display & 5MP Camera

September 14, 2021 From roadtovr

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi unveiled its first pair of smart glasses today, sensibly called Xiaomi Smart Glasses. They aren’t a product you can buy for now, as the company calls the concept device “an engineer’s look into an advanced future.” With the world’s largest smartphone manufacture expressing interest though, it may mean we’ll be hearing a lot more about consumer smart glasses in the years to come.

Hot on the heels of Facebook & Ray-Ban’s Stories camera glasses, Xiaomi released a video showing off its own concept smart eyewear which not only includes a 5MP camera and speakers, but also a microLED display that serves up information such as notifications, turn-by-turn directions, and real-time text and photo translations.

Based around a quad-core ARM processor running Android, Xiaomi Smart Glasses are said to contain a microLED on silicon chip measuring 2.4mm × 2.02mm, something the company says is roughly the size of a grain of rice, with individual pixels sized at 4μm.

Image courtesy Xiaomi

For a concept that may or may not be built, Xiaomi doesn’t boast specs like a full RGB display, rather showing one in green monochrome that’s supposed to optimize for brightness—2 million nits, Xiaomi says—serving info to the user’s right eye via waveguide optics.

Xiaomi Smart Glasses house a single 5MP camera for taking photos and doing machine learning tasks like translating text between languages. Like Ray-Ban Stories, an adjacent indicator light is included so others know when its in-use. The whole package is said to weigh in at only 51g, which is about the weight of two alkaline AA batteries.

Image courtesy Xiaomi

The company is positioning it as a standalone device that won’t act as a “second screen” for your smartphone. That’s a bit of a stretch for now though since it only has a few functions, such as displaying basic notifications, incoming calls, turn-by-turn navigation, taking photos, and serving up what it claims is “real-time text and photo translations.”

Image courtesy Xiaomi

Optical wearables such as smart glasses and AR headsets (learn about the difference here) are still in such an early state that input is far from solved. Xiaomi says its primary input will be handled by XiaoAi AI voice assistant, which can do things like audio-to-text transcription. It’s also said to contain a touchpad, which is ostensibly integrated into one of the glasses’ arms.

It’s uncertain if Xiaomi Smart Glasses are simply a “what if” at this point, or if it’s truly looking to productize the fledgling wearable in the near future. Xiaomi generally seems at home making smaller design risks to better differentiate itself from Samsung and Apple, with things like retracting selfie cameras and edge-to-edge displays making headlines. That said, if Xiaomi is gearing up to enter a market, you can bet they’ll bring their patent one-upmanship to the table in any class of smart device they produce.

Filed Under: mi smart glasses, News, Smart Glasses, Smartglasses, xiaomi, xiaomi mi smart glasses, xiaomi smart glasses

Ray-Ban Stories is Facebook’s £299 Entry Into the Smart Glasses Market

September 9, 2021 From vrfocus

Well, that leak earlier today turned out to be right on the money. Facebook and Ray-Ban have officially announced Ray-Ban Stories, their smart glasses collaboration featuring three style varients, built-in cameras and much more, all available from £299 GBP/$299 USD.

Ray-Ban Facebook smartglasses
Ray-Ban Stories: Round

Combining Facebook’s technical know-how with EssilorLuxottica’s – Ray-Ban’s parent company – styling, Ray-Ban Stories is their first foray into the burgeoning consumer smart glasses market. Available in three frame flavours – Round, Wayfarer and Meteor – as you might expect from Ray-Ban the options don’t stop there with a selection of frame and lens colours (5 colours, 6 colours and 4 colours respectively).

But what’s underneath all that fancy styling? The Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses feature dual integrated 5MP cameras that allow you to take photos (2592×1944 pixels) and up to 30-second videos (1184×1184 pixels at 30 FPS) using either a button located on the right arm or by using Facebook Assistant voice commands. Handy if you don’t want to keep looking at your phone. Storage-wise Facebook hasn’t given a GB capacity, just that the glasses can store 500 photos and 30 videos. And just so others know when you’re recording and LED will illuminate when recording is in process.

And that’s just the start of the tech built-in. The smart glasses have open-ear speakers built-in and a three-microphone audio array so you can take calls easily on the go and record decent audio for all those social videos. Oh and let’s not forget the touch control housed in the right arm so you can pause and play music, even turning the volume up and down. WiFi and Bluetooth are also built-in.

Ray-Ban Stories

A new bit of tech wouldn’t be complete without its own app with Facebook View complementing the package. It’s designed to make importing, editing, and sharing captured content easy; whether that’s to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat and more.

Along with all those tech features and style combinations, Ray-Ban Stories come with a portable charging case to keep those expensive smart glasses safe and ready for use. The case itself can be charged with the supplied USB-C cable. Actual specifics including battery duration and charge time haven’t been released.

Augmented reality (AR) glasses these smart glasses are not but with a multi-year partnership in place Ray-Ban Stories are the first step towards that goal. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.

Filed Under: Facebook, News, Ray-Ban, Ray-Ban Stories, Smart Glasses

Facebook & Ray-Ban Launch $300 Stories Glasses, a Hybrid Between Snap Spectacles & Bose Frames

September 9, 2021 From roadtovr

Facebook and Ray-Ban today unveiled Stories, a new line of tech-forward glasses the companies hope will pave the way for a future of smart and stylish AR devices. Stories appear to fit in the same category as the first three generations of Snap’s Spectacles, but also include integrated audio like Bose Frames, making them a little less smart than we had initially hoped—but a lot smarter than most.

Stories are being offered in three distinct flavors: Wayfarer, Round, and Meteor, all of which appear to be pretty similar to original Ray-Ban frame designs. They’re launching today at $300 direct from Ray-Ban as well as official online retailers in the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Italy and Australia.

Stories look pretty sleek, which is partly because they don’t have any form of display within, as they feature the sort of lenses you might find in any normal pair of sunglasses or prescription specs. Instead, Stories includes dual 5 megapixel cameras on the temples that let you capture sterescopic video and still images. A single button on the right temple is used to start and stop 30-second video recordings, and take photos.

Image courtesy Ray-Ban, Facebook

Facebook is advertising a storage of about thirty 30-second videos or 500 photos, which is said to be kept locally encrypted on the device itself. That’s the only storage metric available to us, so there’s no word on how large that space physically is in GBs.

The frames also house microphones and integrated speakers that stream audio over Bluetooth 5.0, which will let you listen to music or podcasts, and take calls in addition to voice recognition stuff like saying “Hey Facebook, take a video.”

That Facebook Assistant integration and the Facebook View app come part an parcel with Stories, the latter of which acts as your content management platform where you can import, edit, create and share captures.

Check out Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reveal Stories in the video below:

As for privacy, a capture LED on the right temple indicates when Stories are recording, and they also feature a physical off button as well on the glasses’ left strut.

Models are offered in both sunglasses versions with a variety of colors or clear lenses featuring clear with blue light filter, brown gradient, green, grey, blue polarized, and transition lenses.

A magnetic charging case also ships with Stories, although the battery situation is far from clear, both in terms of on-device runtime and added runtime with the case.

Image courtesy Ray-Ban, Facebook

Here’s a few basic specs:

  • Photo stills: 2,592 x 1,944px
  • Video camera: Minimum 1,184 x 1,184px@30fps
  • Dual micro speakers
  • 3 Microphone Audio Array
  • WIFI 802.11 Ac, 2.45/5 Ghz
  • Bluetooth 5.0
  • OS Compatibility – IOS 13 / Android 8.1 Minimum

Facebook seems to be playing a little fast and loose by specifically calling Stories “smart glasses.” To be fair, Stories are basically a new product segment that aim to bridge the gap between camera glasses like earlier iterations of Snap Spectacles and audio sunglasses like Bose Frames. Smarter glasses, maybe?

Unlike augmented reality, which shows the user digital information that’s presented as if exists in reality itself (think Microsoft HoloLens, Nreal Light, Magic Leap 1), smartglasses typically present actionable information to the user via a small screen that functions as a heads-up display (HUD). Much like a smartwatch, smartglasses are supposed to provide info like text messages, biometrics, incoming phone calls, or turn-by-turn directions. Examples of smartglasses include Google Glass, North Focals, and a number of devices available from Vuzix.

If you want to learn more about smartglasses and AR, check out our primer that tackles that very issue.

This is only the first of what Facebook calls a “multi-year partnership” with Ray-Ban parent company EssilorLuxottica, so it’s likely this is only the first of what will become an evolving product segment towards smarter devices than this.

Filed Under: facebook AR, facebook rayban, facebook smart glasses, facebook stories, News, Ray-Ban, ray-ban ar, ray-ban smart glasses, Ray-Ban Stories, rayban, Smart Glasses, Smartglasses

Ray-Ban and Facebook’s Smart Glasses Have Reportedly Leaked

September 9, 2021 From vrfocus

Today was supposed to be the day that Ray-Ban and Facebook make their big smart glasses reveal but it seems a leak has beaten them to it. Several images have appeared on Twitter showcasing the new product for the first time, indicating functionality close to Snap’s Spectacles.

Ray-Ban x Facebook

Over on the prolific @evleaks Twitter account, a collection of images reveal three designs for the smart glasses all under the banner of Ray-Ban Stories. These offer some classic looking designs including Round, Wayfarer (seen below) and Meteor. There’s even imagery of what customers get in the box, with both companies logos on the front but only Ray-Ban’s on the glasses themselves.

While Facebook has talked about the glasses for a while they’re not going to be full augmented reality (AR) glasses that Project Aria envisions. As you can see from the designs, each model has a pair of cameras built into the frames to record video. Facebook Reality Labs’ Head Andrew “Boz” Bosworth has released several teasing videos this week alongside a sunglasses emoji suggesting the footage recorded has come for the new smart glasses.

Other than that footage, neither Facebook nor Ray-Ban has revealed any specifications for the upcoming models, obviously, all the official announcements will be taking place later today. Hopefully, they’ll include the launch date and price, which probably won’t be cheap considering the Ray-Ban branding.

Ray-Ban x Facebook glasses

These Ray-Ban Stories are only the first step for Facebook on the road to fully realised AR glasses but the company is still playing catchup when it comes to consumer products. Earlier this year Snap Inc. revealed its fully AR Spectacles using waveguide displays, whilst company’s like Nreal and Rokid have got products on the market or coming to market respectively.

As further details come to light later today, VRFocus will let you know.

Filed Under: Facebook, News, Ray-Ban, Smart Glasses

Facebook’s Ray-Ban Smartglasses Get Their Big Reveal on Thursday

September 8, 2021 From roadtovr

Facebook and Ray-Ban are collaborating on what promises to be a pair of smartglasses, something that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in July would “let you do some pretty neat things.” Well, the companies are getting ready to reveal the device on September 9th, 2021, so we’re sure to learn more then.

Ray-Ban, a brand of the mega Italian-French optics firm EssilorLuxottica, released a splash page showing off the silhouette of a very Wayfarer-looking pair of specs. Although we’ve heard about the deal for two years now, little is known about the upcoming ‘smart glasses’—their words, not ours—they at very least have the ability record high-quality video.

Facebook Reality Labs VP Andrew Bosworth tweeted a video earlier this week showing off some of his family vacation, which notably features a cameo by none other than Mark Zuckerberg. It’s thought these were recorded with the Ray-Ban/Facebook specs.

😎 pic.twitter.com/Vun7vmuCbU

— Boz (@boztank) September 6, 2021

Bosworth also tweeted another video emphasizing the device’s ability to be capture video whilst leaving the user free to golf two-handed. In both videos we can see Zuckerberg and April Bosworth donning what appear to be Ray-Bans, although it’s unclear if either these are the ‘smart’ variety or otherwise.

🏌️😎 pic.twitter.com/ul748jBS2Y

— Boz (@boztank) September 7, 2021

Smartglasses are a wearable device separate from augmented reality, and are generally defined by their ability to present useful information to the user, often in the form of a small floating screen or heads-up display (HUD). Like a smartwatch, information ranges from things like text messages, biometrics, incoming phone calls, turn-by-turn directions, etc. Think Google Glass or Vuzix Blade—not Microsoft HoloLens or Magic Leap 1.

In Facebook’s Q2 2021 earnings call in late July, Zuckerberg said he was excited release the glasses whilst continuing to “make progress on the journey towards full augmented reality glasses in the future.” We’re hoping to learn what precisely separates the Ray-Ban specs from camera glasses like Snap’s Spectacles (gen 1-3), which only record brief snippets of video.

If you’re interested in learning what separates smartglasses and augmented reality, read more here. We’ll be following this story as it breaks tomorrow, so check back for more then.

Filed Under: facebook AR, facebook ar glasses, facebook ar headset, Facebook glasses, facebook smart glasses, Facebook smartglasses, luxxotica, News, Ray-Ban, ray-ban ar, ray-ban smart glasses, rayban, Smart Glasses, Smartglasses

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