OPPO's annual INNO Day is happening, and they started with the unveiling of their first-ever smart glasses, or well, you could even call it a smart glass because you are looking at a monocle considering how it is worn on just one side of the face. After looking at it, the first thing I thought was that it reminded me of the visor that we saw in Dragon Ball manga and anime. The best thing is that the OPPO Air Glass is a consumer product and will be going on sale soon.
For those wondering, the OPPO Air Glass is an "assisted reality" handset that will provide useful information to the user without the need for them actually to use another screen. Imagine navigational instructions, incoming text messages, and other information that can pop up in front of your eye.
The OPPO Air Glass Gives an Interesting Look Into the Future
If you are interested, you can wear the OPPO Air Glass by itself, or you can attach it to your conventional pair of glasses using magnets, and to make the setup hassle-free, the headset will not a lot of weight either. The Chinese manufacturer has also stated that they have taken responsibility for building all the components on their own, including tiny projectors called "Spark Micro Project" that is just 0.5cc small. The projector also features a CNC metal enclosure with a sapphire glass lens module. Powering the whole thing is a Micro-LED panel, and the total weight of this Air Glass is just 30 grams.
The frame of the OPPO Air Glass also houses a Snapdragon 4100 chip, a touch bar that you can use for controlling the glass, dual microphones, and a speaker. At the moment, the monocle can only pair with OPPO Watch 2 and smartphones running ColorOS 11 or later.
You can control the Air Glass using voice, touch, head, or hand gestures, with the latter only when the user is wearing an OPPO Watch 2. The lens you are getting measures 0.7mm in thickness and has a shape inspired by "the wings of a cicada," according to OPPO's Product Director Yi Xu. The content you see on the glass can reach the max brightness of 1,400 nits and can be shown in either 16-level grayscale or 256-level greyscale. The frame comes in silver or black and will be available in two sizes.
You will also be able to use the Air Glass to take phone calls and listen to music, but OPPO wants to add more features, such as letting you use the Air Glass to act as a teleprompter.
The company has also claimed that the Air Glass can do real-time translations between two people wearing the glass. For instance, if one person speaks English, the other person's glass will display the translated Chinese text. The Air Glass can only support translation between English and Chinese for now but will also support Chinese and Japanese and Chinese and Korean soon.
The OPPO Air Glass will run for three hours on a single charge, and the company is making the APK available to third-party developers to utilize the tech. The device will be available to buy in China in Q1 2022. Other than that, there is no word on the pricing.
