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Analyst Mark Gurman says Apple's newly unveiled iPhone Duo, its first foldable phone, could spawn variants like a Duo Max, Duo mini, or Duo SE in coming years. He argues Apple deliberately picked a short name to leave room for such suffixes, mirroring its Air and Pro naming conventions.
Plaintiffs in Illinois and California have filed a class action lawsuit against Meta, alleging the company intends to incorporate facial recognition technology into its smart glasses products. The suit centers on privacy concerns tied to biometric data collection without proper consent.
Apple's September event unveiled the foldable iPhone Duo, iPhone 18 Pro models, ANC on the entry-level AirPods 5, and a Siri Recap feature for Apple Watch, but did not include the long-rumored AirPods Pro with built-in cameras. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, that camera-equipped model has been pushed back to 2027. The rumored cameras were said to be low-resolution and meant to feed Siri and Visual Intelligence rather than capture photos or video.
Reports indicate Samsung is already developing a successor to its still-unreleased smart glasses, suggesting the company is planning a multi-year product roadmap before the debut device even reaches consumers. Details on the follow-up model's features remain unclear at this stage.
Meta has remotely disabled photo and video functions on smart glasses that owners modified to hide or disable the recording indicator light. The company's wearables VP told Semafor that under 0.1% of the roughly 7 million glasses sold in 2025 were altered this way, meaning up to several thousand devices were affected. The move follows a wave of complaints about people using the glasses to secretly film others, particularly women, without consent.
Snap plans to release its Specs smart glasses on September 16 priced at $2,195, a project CEO Evan Spiegel has championed for years. His public appearances promoting the device, including wearing them throughout a CNBC interview, drew mocking reactions online over their appearance and cost.
HTC is bringing its Vive Eagle smart glasses to the US market after debuting them last year, offering a screen-free, glasses-first design. The device includes a 12MP ultrawide camera, 32GB of encrypted storage, and support for either OpenAI or Gemini voice assistants, running on Qualcomm's Snapdragon AR1 chip. Pricing starts at $499 for standard or sunglass lenses, rising to $599 for photochromic versions.
Burning Man organizers updated their official survival guide to allow Meta's camera-equipped smart glasses at this year's festival, provided wearers get explicit permission before recording anyone in frame. The policy contrasts with venues like New York nightclub Basement, which has vowed to permanently ban attendees caught wearing the devices.
Snap is releasing its Specs smart glasses at a $2,195 price point, positioning the device as a major new consumer hardware product. CEO Evan Spiegel is pushing this bet even as Snap continues to face pressure over its lack of consistent profitability.
Apple is preparing to release its first smart glasses as early as next year, built around Siri and Visual Intelligence rather than augmented-reality displays. The glasses will use cameras and microphones to let Siri interpret surroundings, translate text, and answer contextual questions, plus built-in speakers for audio, according to a Bloomberg report citing Mark Gurman. Apple is designing multiple frame styles in-house using acetate material, with possible future versions adding health-tracking features like heart-rate sensors.
Meta released another firmware update aimed at preventing users from disabling or covering the LED light that signals when its smart glasses are recording. The update, announced by wearables chief Alex Himel, is meant to more reliably alert bystanders that photos or video are being captured, and Meta says similar updates will keep coming.
Meta is pushing an update that stops its AI glasses from recording if the indicator LED is covered mid-capture, closing a workaround where users could start filming and then hide the light afterward. Wearables executive Alex Himel confirmed the fix on Threads, saying it ensures the light reliably signals to bystanders when they're being filmed.