GoKawiilSamsung just revealed some more details about its upcoming line of smart glasses at Unpacked, following a tease at Google I/O earlier this year. We now know that the specs will be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 platform, which includes the Hexagon NPU for on-device AI tasks.
Qualcomm says the platform is "optimized for lightweight, battery-efficient" glasses and battery specs from Samsung support that claim. The company says they'll last nine hours per charge and they come with a charging case that stores enough juice for seven charges. The company also promises visual search and real-time translation capabilities to "enable the ultimate personal assistant experience." It's worth noting these glasses do not include a display of any kind.
Otherwise, the glasses support both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.3 for streaming from a connected phone and other devices. There's also an integrated camera, which is one of the main selling points of these types of smart glasses. This has caused quite a stir in the "I don't want strangers constantly filming me without consent" community, for obvious reasons.
Samsung is addressing this via a LED light that activates when the camera is recording. There's also integrated software that disables the camera system when that LED light is covered or obscured in any way. Meta does something similar with its smart glasses, but this led to companies offering "hacking" services that allows smart glass perverts to do their thing without any LED light.
Meta has tried to solve this problem by disabling the camera if anyone tampers with the LED. This is a brand-new initiative, so we don't know if it helped stem the pervy tide. Samsung's upcoming glasses will no doubt experience a similar influx of "content creators" looking for ways to disable the LED light.
We don't know when these glasses will be available or how much they'll cost. The company will give us more information in the fall. We do know, however, what they'll look like. Samsung has teamed up with global brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster for the frames, and the designs look great.