Oppo has revealed a smart eyewear called Oppo Air Glass. However, the Oppo Air Glass is not quite an AR smart glasses like the Oppo AR Glass 2021. It is a smart glass. Note the singular ‘glass’ because it is pretty much monocle eyewear.
Also, it is not quite an augmented reality eyewear; it is still “aR” (note the lowercase ‘a’) but the “A” here stands for “assisted” (hence the differentiation with lowercase ‘a’).
The Oppo Air Glass is what the company referred to as an “assisted reality” product. But what is aR? Basically, it is kind of like Google Glass. Think of the Oppo Air Glass as a smartwatch function but for the eye.
Like a smartwatch, you can access your calendar, notifications, and whatnot pushed from your phone but only this time, this info is presented right before your eye.
It is a 2D thing that reminds us of the HUD found on fighter jets and some high-end sports cars. Before we get into the innards, let talk about the design which is said to be inspired by a feather.
It is sleek but at the same time superfluous. You see, Oppo Air Glass has this so-called monocular split design which comprises of two parts: a regular pair of glasses and the smart glass. The latter magnetically attaches to the former by the virtue of a magnetic port on the frame.
The frame is available in two finishes and two designs: a half frame for the non-myopic and a full frame for those who need to use prescription lenses. The half-frame is the part where it is absolutely superfluous, IMHO.
In order to use this one-lens smart wearable, you need to make yourself put on a lens-less frame.
Anyways, as far as the actual hardware goes, it is super lightweight, tipping the scales at a mere 30g (that’s 1.1 oz!).
Under the hood, it has Qualcomm Snapdragon 4100 processor – the same chip that powers many new smartwatches including the TicWatch E3 and TicWatch Pro 3 GPS.
It is paired to a battery good for up to 3 hours of use, or 10.5 hours when use with the charging cradle.
Visuals are made possible by a silicon-based Micro LED display, “Spark” micro projector, and the lens itself which is an optical waveguide display sandwiched between sapphire lens.
The micro projector features a 5-element lens and it is super tiny, having a volume of just 0.5cc.
The Micro LED, “Spark” and the lens form the basis of the projection you see before your eye. The Micro LED, which boasts a 4 um single pixel size, is capable of 3 million nit peak brightness. But what you will see, on the optical waveguide display maxes out at 1,400 nits.
In addition to touch gestures via touch sensor across the length of the temple that resembles the rachis on a feather, the glass also supports voice, hand tracking, and head tracking.
The display is monochrome, btw, but it is capable of up to 256 levels of grayscale. Also onboard is a driver chip, paired to a self-developed algorithm, dual microphones for reduced environmental noise for voice calls, and Bluetooth LE.
So what are the real-world use for this device? Well, we said it earlier, it is like the smartwatch. This also means, glancing at your fitness metrics.
Oppo has also partnered with Baidu to bring turn-to-turn navigation. There is also an AR shops explorer that shows you the businesses of interest within your direction of view.
There is also a teleprompter feature for presentations and a real-time translator that lets two Oppo Air Glass users converse using their native language (supported languages, of course) with the resulting translated language presented on the glass in real-time.
The Oppo Air Glass will be available in Spring 2022. Pricing is, however, yet to be announced.
Images: Oppo [CH].
