Sony’s Google Glass-like Smartglasses To Be Available By The End Of March 2015

Friday, September 19, 2014

Sony’s Google Glass-like Smartglasses To Be Available By The End Of March 2015

We recently wrote about Sony’s struggles as the company tries to restructure its mobile division in order to avoid further losses due to weak sales of their Xperia devices. The company has decided to focus on a high-end market because they apparently can’t keep up with the low-mid range offerings (and pricing of those devices) by Chinese manufacturers like Xiaomi and Meizu. You might think there’s no way Sony will continue to dabble in smart glass territory, well, you’d be wrong it seems. Sony has introduced their “SmartEyeglass” smarglasses at MWC (Mobile World Congress) this year, now we get some more details about this product. (Mobile World Congress) this year, now we get some more details about this product.

I personally hope the name “SmartEyeglass” won’t stick when the final product is released for obvious reasons, though it probably will. Anyhow, these smart glasses will connect to Android 4.1+ devices and superimpose images, videos and text in the eyes of the person who is wearing them. Android 4.3+ is required in order to use the video functionality of the camera. These are kind of a bulky pair of 3D glasses which include a 3-megapixel camera, brightness sensor, compass, gyroscope, accelerometer, a microphone and a pretty hefty battery pack. This product is currently in prototype stage though it can connect to a range of smartphones already. These smar tglasses deliver hologram-like visuals through its 3mm thick lenses and monochrome display (which helps with energy saving). SmartEyeglass, unlike Google Glass, won’t host its own apps but will use the ones installed on a smartphone the device is connected to. These glasses will connect to smartphones via Bluetooth of course and Sony is opening its software kit in order to kick things off, they will release their SDK to developers on September 19th. Sony said that prototype SmartEyeglass should be on sale by the end of March 2015.

I don’t know what to say here really… I didn’t expect Sony to actually go through with this project. They’re struggling in the mobile sector and now they decided to push this all the way through. I’ll wait for the product to hit consumers before I comment any further, I’m not overly optimistic though as much as I want Sony to succeed in the mobile department. In the meantime, check out the video down below if you’re interested.