I'm standing in the lobby of a hotel in Hawaii, gazing into the glaring sun through the lens of Snap AR Spectacles and wondering if this is my future.
The glasses are an updated version of the ones I tried out last year at the Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii. Rather than playing with Moo Deng -- a fun little novelty -- I'm using them for things I do every day on my phone: Browsing the internet and scrolling through social videos.
Right here is evidence of Snap bringing productivity and genuinely useful features to its glasses, which are still a clunky developer version for now, before it eventually turns Spectacles into a bona fide consumer device. Like my colleague Scott Stein, who tried the Spectacles out several weeks ago, I'm most impressed with the AI-powered live translation feature. It allows me to see my conversation partner's words translated into French subtitles in real time just below her face, making it easy for us to converse naturally without breaking eye contact.
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To me, the progression is clear: The Spectacles seem to be growing up, taking themselves more seriously and finding their true purpose. This is part of a wider trend of XR devices (mixed reality), which feel as though they're on the cusp of having a major mainstream breakthrough.
Trace the idea of XR back to its earliest days, and you will find clunky virtual reality headsets that were groundbreaking in their time and showed us a vision of wearable screens that ultimately didn't lead to mainstream adoption. Even Apple's much-hyped mixed-reality headset, the Vision Pro, has struggled to establish broad appeal beyond the pros and rich bros.
But many people in tech think we're about to hit a watershed moment for XR.
"The time [for XR] is now," said Rick Osterloh, SVP of devices and services at Google, speaking at the Snapdragon Summit. "The technology's ready and a bunch of products are going to really change the user experience."
Google has been working on XR products for a long time, said Osterloh, but the combination of underlying silicon, such as Qualcomm's chips, and AI breakthroughs means the tech "is now ready to be able to create a new, brand new computing experience that's really powerful."
The concept of a breakthrough moment for XR doesn't appear to be just wishful thinking either. Sales volumes of Meta's Rayban glasses, also powered by Qualcomm, have increased more than 12x from the end of last year to now, Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm's group general manager for mobile, compute and XR told me.
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