On July 19, 2022, google announced testing for new smart glasses with augmented reality technology. Inevitably, the question that has been surfacing in the tech industry since 2013—when Google launched their first smart glasses—will return: will smart glasses replace smartphones?
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes smart glasses will replace smartphones by 2030. The inventor of the Microsoft Hololens, Alex Kipman agrees, telling Bloomberg that “smartphones are dead”, but people don’t know it yet. Even top smartphone manufacturers agree that something big is inevitably coming.
Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, said 6G will be a reality by 2030, but users will not connect to it with their smartphones, they will connect with smart glasses, CNBC reported.
Glasses such as Toshiba’s dynaEdge, Magic Leap One, Microsoft Hololens and Google’s Enterprise Glass Edition, have sold and performed well, but are mainly aimed at the industrial and business sectors. They are used in smart factories, to train technical personnel, perform inspections, perform digital twins and even worn by NASA astronauts.
On the other hand, smart glasses aimed at the mass consumer audience are slowly gaining ground. Glasses such as the Lenovo ThinkReality A3, Amazon Echo Frames, Bose Frames, Snap Spectacles 3, Nreal Air Glasses and the Oculus Quest 2 – produced by Meta – are promoted as the gateway to the Metaverse. However, there are several technical and legal reasons why smart glasses have not been fully embraced by consumers.
Smart glasses: technical and legal challenges
Mounting a fully operational microcomputer on a pair of glasses is a journey full of technical challenges. The processor chip and hardware must be smaller than those in a smartphone, yet stable and powerful enough to provide the data-intensive consumption features of augmented reality that even smartphones don’t offer.
In addition, battery size and duration, control options, connectivity, sound, video and especially microdisplays are proving to be the main barriers preventing the technology from taking off.
On the other hand, smart glasses for personal use have caused controversy for tracking personal data and abuse of individual privacy rights by recording video, taking pictures or grabbing audio and other data without permission.
TO SEE: Ethical Policy for Artificial Intelligence (Tech Republic Premium)
In September 2021, Meta’s Rayban smart glasses were flagged by Italian and Irish privacy watchdogs DPC and Garante. The DPC and the Italian data protection supervisor demanded Meta to show how the smart glasses notify other people when it captures audio and video.
Amazon, Google, Meta and even Apple have faced lawsuits over privacy and data governance in the past. Legal processes in Europe have the power to pause or modify new products or services. Tech companies could even be sentenced to cancel the launch of the product in the region.
Data and privacy policies are still in high demand by global consumers and there are several regulations to ensure this. Companies developing smart glasses must comply with the requirements of laws, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an important European law on data protection and privacy. And in the US, they must also adhere to federal and state data and privacy laws.
These complex technical, ethical and legal issues are undoubtedly disrupting the mass adoption of smart glasses worldwide. It could also be one of the reasons why apple hasn’t unveiled its smart glasses yet. The Cupertino company could perfect its product to meet these challenges.
Google’s Metaverse: Reality vs. Virtuality
Unlike Apple, Microsoft and especially Meta, Google’s Metaverse project has held a historical low. Recently, however, the company began to take a more aggressive approach to building the hardware and software behind their immersive reality experiences.
In December 2021, Google . rented Mark Lucovsky—former general manager of Oculus-Meta OS—as senior director of the newly formed augmented reality operating system team. The team was built to develop the operating system for what Google described as an “innovative augmented reality device.” Fast forward eight months and Google announced testing of a new smart glass technology.
“Augmented reality opens up new ways to interact with the world around us,” Google said in their announcement blog. Google’s vision for the metaverse is one in which “technology helps people perform everyday tasks”.
With these new smart glasses, users can instantly get real-time translations when they have conversations in the real world through text overlays in their line of sight. Google is also testing augmented reality navigation features for their new smartphones and translating text apps, such as when a user reads a menu.
TO SEE: Metaverse Cheat Sheet: Everything You Need to Know (Free PDF) (TechRepublic)
The new Google Smart Glass prototype isn’t bulky or heavy. It looks like normal glasses with a display in the lens and visual and audio sensors. The smart glass prototype is moving from lab testing to real-world testing to determine its limitations. Google also wants to know how real-world factors, such as the weather or busy streets, affect the AR experience.
Several dozen Googlers and trusted testers were selected for the small-scale tests. The prototypes include in-lens displays, microphones and cameras, but film, record or photograph to avoid privacy concerns associated with smart glasses.
Google explains that most images used during the experience will be removed later. Some image data can be saved for analysis and debugging, but sensitive content such as faces and license plates is removed. Like Meta’s Rayban smart glasses, this new Google prototype warns other users that the camera is active via a visible LED indicator mounted on the glasses frame.
Google seems to be moving towards an augmented reality metaverse, building digital features functional for everyday life on the foundations of reality. This down-to-earth metaverse vision stands in stark contrast to the colorful virtual reality vision that Meta, Roblox, Decentraland, and Microsoft, to name a few, are developing. If smart glasses are to replace smartphones, they will certainly have to provide the real features that smartphones offer today, this gives augmented reality glasses a clear market advantage over virtual reality headsets.
