Details about Sony’s prototype wearable glasses have been published by the company. This comes as it is now offering the SDK to developers, with the SmartEyeglass soon to follow by the end of the FY2014 (which is March 2015). The initial build can connect with Android 4.1 and later, which gives it quite a large range of compatible smartphones.
Like most wearable technology, the SmartEyeglass is equipped with an array of sensors to figure out where the device is. It has the usual accelerometer, gyroscope, electronic compass, and brightness sensor; location data is borrowed from the smartphone that the glasses are paired to. It’s nothing entirely unusual, and has been seen on the Google Glass before.
Sony is claiming lenses that are only 3mm thick, and has opted for a monochrome display to increase battery life. The green font ends up looking like something out of the Terminator movies; especially when the face identification feature is shown off in the trailer. With any luck a developer will figure out how to turn the lettering red for a more menacing effect.
One thing that looks odd is the attached controller, which dangles on a cable attached to the glasses. It appears that the cable is only long enough to reach a shirt pocket, and hopefully this is only the case due to the nature of the product being an early development unit. It simply would not do to have a cable dangling from one’s glasses all day.
[Source: Sony]
