Tokyo, 15 December, /AJMEDIA/
Smart glasses were supposed to be the next big thing… nearly a decade ago. Fast forward to 2021, and they’ve failed to become part of our daily lives, reduced to a mostly forgotten corner of consumer tech history.
Chinese consumer electronics giant Oppo wants to change that and has taken its first commercial stab at making smart glasses a thing. Enter the Oppo Air Glass, a pair of lightweight glasses designed to help you “get more out of everyday life.”
The Oppo Air Glass is essentially a set of spectacles that come with an additional glass frame attachment that magnetically snaps onto the right side of the frame. The frame, which has a magnetic component, is used to house the projector, motherboard, Snapdragon Wear 4100 Platform, battery, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth antennas, microphones and a speaker.
The superb thing about the Air Glass? You can use it by swiping the touch bar on the right side of the frame, as well as through hand gestures and head shakes. There is no wire on this device, just that snap-on attachment, paired via Bluetooth to the Reno 6 Pro phone Oppo sent me, or the company’s Watch 2. (The Air Glass doesn’t yet have support for other Android phones or iOS.)
For now, the Air Glass will receive a limited release within mainland China in the first quarter of 2022, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets a broader international release in the coming years. Pricing details were not available at time of writing.
To understand the space that Oppo’s Air Glass fills in the world of smart eyewear, let’s first consider what it is not. The Air Glass is not a pair of VR glasses, cutting you off from real-world surroundings, nor does it attempt to beam you into the metaverse or any other virtual world. Oppo says that it strives to assist reality rather than augment it.