Many companies have tried smart wearables in different ways, but getting people to put on improved glasses has become the gold standard, and it’s a formula that no one has really cracked yet. However, like many others, Samsung is in the process of developing its own pair of smart glasses, and some leaked concept videos demonstrate a series of ambitious goals that may be available when (or if) these glasses are released.
These videos comes from WalkingCat (@ _h0x0d_) on twitter. What should be kept in mind is that these are concepts of how glasses can be used, not necessarily what current prototypes or future products will be capable of.
The first video includes close-ups of the thick frame of the glasses – which look enough like Snapchat glasses that it’s hard not to imagine them. The demos highlight the potential for glasses to be used to play games, watch videos, mirror a Dex display to write an email, make a video call and get an FPV view while flying a DJI drone. There are also sections that highlight some of the other non-video features, including control via a smart watch and a special mode of sunglasses that tint the lenses for use in daylight.
The second video enters much more optimistic territory with immersive holographic video calls, AR simulations and full-body gesture recognition. There is also an opening clip examining and interacting with very complex text in some office documents. These things seem much more aspirational, as they depend on resources that shouldn’t be possible just with glasses.
The physical design of the glasses is quite robust, and the initial concept videos show small glass reflectors suspended at eye level, somewhat similar to the prisms used in Google Glass. The model also presses part of the right arm to activate the Sunglasses mode, but it is not clear whether it is a button or something else. Apart from these details, there is no signal from cameras, sensors or other types of controls.
Most of the functions demonstrated in the first video are not very different from those seen in other products and prototypes. Mirroring video from a phone or other source is quite simple, although it can be difficult to get it right when views need to be presented in stereoscopic form – that is, show the same thing to both eyes. Likewise, the sunglasses mode is probably achieved with electrochromic glass, which OnePlus (via Oppo) and Vivo have been experimenting with.
The challenges presented with these features can boil down to familiar issues, such as battery life, performance and resolution. For example, videos can look good because our brains can adjust to an imperfect stereoscopic image when watching a video, and even writing an email will be fine if the text is reasonably long; but it becomes much more difficult to read smaller texts if the images are not perfectly aligned.
Several companies are working on smart eyewear products, some aimed at commercial and industrial use like Microsoft and Google, while Facebook and Apple are known to work on consumer-oriented products. Samsung’s conceptual videos seem to suggest that these glasses are intended for all types of use cases, or at least that’s how they are being marketed internally.