Many companies have tried to get smart wearable garments in different shapes, but improving people to wear glasses has become the gold standard, and it’s a formula that no one has really cracked yet. Like many others, however, Samsung is developing its own smart glasses, and some leaked concept videos show a series of ambitious goals that may be available when (or if) these glasses start.
These videos comes from WalkingCat (@ _h0x0d_) on Twitter. The thing to keep in mind is that these are many concepts of how the glasses can be used, not necessarily what the current prototypes or future products are capable of.
The first video contains close-ups of the thick frame of the glasses – which look just enough like the Snapchat Spectacles that it’s hard not to imagine them. The demonstrations highlight the potential for the glasses to play games, watch videos, mirror a Dex screen to write an email, take a video call, and get an FPV version while you flying with a DJI drone. There are also sections that highlight some other features that do not include videos, including control by a smart watch and a special sunglasses mode that colors the lenses for use in bright daylight.
The second video moves into a much more optimistic area with immersive holographic video calls, AR simulations, and whole-body recognition. There is also an opening grip of the investigation into and interaction with fairly complex text in some office documents. These things seem much more aspiring because they rely on abilities that would not be possible with the glasses alone.
The physical design of the glasses is quite thick, and the initial concept videos show small glass reflectors hanging at eye level, somewhat similar to the prism used in Google Glass. The model also presses a part of the right arm to activate the Sunglasses Mode, but it’s unclear if it’s a button or something else. Apart from these details, there is no sign of cameras, sensors or other types of controls.
Most of the features shown in the first video are not just different from things seen in other products and prototypes. Reflecting videos from a phone or other source is fairly simple, but it can be difficult to make them look right if the views are to be presented in stereoscopic form – that is, the same for both eyes. Similarly, the Sunglasses Mode is likely to be achieved with electrochromic glass, with which OnePlus (via Oppo) and Vivo have experimented.
The challenges these features present can amount to known issues such as battery life, performance, and resolution. Videos, for example, can look good because our brain can adapt to an imperfect stereoscopic image when we watch video, and even writing an email would be fine if the text is quite large; but it becomes much more difficult to read smaller text if the images are not set up perfectly.
Several companies work on smart glasses products, some aimed at business and industrial use such as Microsoft and Google, while Facebook and Apple are known for working on consumer-oriented products. Samsung’s draft videos seem to suggest that these glasses are intended for all kinds of use cases, or at least are marketed internally.