We haven’t heard much of the Google Glass in recent times, but apparently the project is still being worked on. But over in China, Oppo has revealed the Air Glass smart glasses, which are effectively a direct competitor to Google Glass. It will launch to Chinese consumers in Q1 2022, although the price was not announced at the Oppo Inno Day where it was unveiled.
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The Oppo Air Glass comes in two parts – a detachable monocle waveguide device in black or white and either a silver half frame or a black full frame. It doesn’t attach to your own pair of glasses, unfortunately.
The new device is designed to deliver simple information for use cases such as navigation, translation, teleprompter, calendar, weather, fitness tracking and more, very much like intention behind Google Glass. Oppo calls this “assisted reality”, which is displayed using a power-efficient “Spark Micro Projector,” which uses a bright 640 x 480 image onto a waveguide display (which is larger than the one on the Google Glass).
The Oppo Air Glass is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100, the same chipset that is being used in flagship smartwatches like the TicWatch Pro 3. Once paired with your preferred device (for now it is only supported by Oppo devices), you can toggle notifications by tapping the Air Glass’ slim touch bar or simply by nodding your head, and then tap again or shake your head to close them. To switch between apps, simply swipe the touch bar.
It also comes with a teleprompter app, which is a unique feature. You simply upload your speech, set your text size and scrolling speed via the smartphone app, and then tap the touch bar to scroll manually if needed. Oppo also want to include hand gesture tracking, which is currently in the testing phase, which will be controlled through the Oppo Watch for more intuitive control.
