Oppo Air Glass is a modernized Google Glass for China | Engadget

There hasn’t been a lot replace on Google Glass because the wider availability of its Enterprise Edition 2 again in early 2020, however on the opposite aspect of the world, Oppo believes now could be the time to launch a direct competitor — albeit within the China market solely. Following final 12 months’s Oppo AR Glass idea, the brand new Oppo Air Glass will turn out to be obtainable to Chinese customers in Q1 2022 for a yet-to-be-announced worth. It’ll are available in two components: a removable monocle waveguide gadget (in black or white) and both a silver half body or a black full body. And no, you will not have the ability to connect this 30-gram gadget to your individual glasses.

Much like Google Glass, Oppo Air Glass is designed to ship easy info to be used instances resembling navigation, translation, teleprompter, calendar, climate, health monitoring and extra. Oppo calls this “assisted reality,” which retains the bundle moveable but sensible and accessible. This is achieved utilizing a power-efficient “Spark Micro Projector,” which is available in at roughly the dimensions of a single espresso bean, and it homes a Micro LED chip to mission a brilliant 640 x 480 picture onto a waveguide show — one which’s bigger than that of Google Glass.

Oppo Air Glass is pushed by a Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100, which is analogous to the chip inside a number of the newest Fossil and TicWatch smartwatches. Once paired with an Oppo telephone (with ColorOS 11 or later) or an Oppo Watch, you may toggle notifications by tapping the Air Glass’ slim contact bar or just by nodding your head, after which faucet once more or shake your head to shut them. To swap between apps, merely swipe the contact bar.

In the case of the teleprompter app, you may add your speech, set your textual content measurement and scrolling pace through the smartphone app, after which faucet the contact bar to scroll manually if wanted. Oppo can be testing hand gesture monitoring through the Oppo Watch for a supposedly extra intuitive management right here.

If you occur to have two Oppo Air Glasses and are struggling to speak with a foreigner, you may pair them up and get your accomplice to put on one for immediate translation — your gadget will translate the opposite particular person’s voice in your display screen, and vice versa. However, solely Chinese, English and Japanese are supported for the time being, with Korean to observe quickly.

For the navigation app, Oppo labored with Baidu to combine Baidu Walk & Bike Navigation in addition to Explore Nearby. Don’t anticipate any subtle AR graphics right here; customers will merely see step-by-step navigation primarily based on one’s location and orientation, and voice command is supported (presumably solely in Chinese).

An Oppo rep added that the Air Glass is the results of two earlier designs, which allowed the corporate to work with builders to construct up an ecosystem. In addition, the Chinese firm will quickly launch a Smart Glass SDK to let extra builders — doubtlessly these from abroad as properly — into the social gathering.

Considering how different corporations resembling Meta, Bose, Amazon, Snap and Razer have been specializing in both audio- or camera-based smartglasses, Oppo’s technique with its Air Glass is actually a little bit of a shock. For now, that is all slightly experimental for Oppo, because the gadget will solely be launched in China in a restricted amount, with every labelled with a novel version quantity on its bundle.