xiaomi

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.