There are a lot of people in the world that need glasses on a daily basis. Despite their often expensive price tag, they do little more than correct poor eyesight. Let Glass updates glasses for the 21st century by integrating them with smart home connectivity.
While maintaining a slim form factor, Let Glass features audio entertainment, telephone communication, and voice interaction. Using Alexa and a built-in microphone, these frames allow users to control their smartphones without fumbling through their pockets. Simply tapping the legs of the smart glasses activate remote control functions, while voice commands handle everything else. In addition to Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and Google Now are also supported.
Keeping with a traditional appearance, audio is produced using bone conduction technology. Instead of a speaker, the glasses vibrate the small bones in the ear to produce sound. This also keeps ears open to other noises, ensuring users remain aware of their surroundings. This allows users to listen to music, track activity, use voice navigation, call a friend, and more.
All this technology in a small package should mean frequent trips to the charger, but that is not the case for Let Glass. Using head detection, these smart glasses auto switch the power when putting them on or off. This saves enough energy to give them a battery life of about 10 days.
When it is time to charge, these frames use magnetic charging to fully juice the battery in 30 minutes. When the connector is placed near the leg of the glasses, it automatically sticks to the port. The glasses don’t add much weight either, weighing in at only 27 grams. That is about the same weight as one AA battery.
The biggest appeal with Let Glass is that they don’t look like smart glasses. They are a far cry from the sci-fi look of Google Glass, and they remain slimmer than the competition.
Let Glass is available for pre-order on Indiegogo, starting at $119. Backers choose between three different frame styles — basic, modern, and vintage. Each style can come in black, red, or blue variations. Additional add-ons include polarized, photochromic, and prescription lenses.
The OnePlus Buds Clip are a new pair of open-ear earbuds built around a simple convenience. They join Sony’s LinkBuds Clip in the growing ear-cuff category, but either OnePlus bud can go on either ear.
Sensors recognize how the earbuds are being worn and route the audio channels accordingly. There’s no label to check before putting them on, and the feature also works when only one bud is used.
We buy fitness bands and activity trackers to keep tabs on our exercise, but it is easy to forget to start tracking or switch modes when moving between different activities. For Fitbit and Pixel Watch users, that could soon become a lot less annoying, as Google is rolling out a major upgrade to automatic activity tracking that can recognize more than 100 types of exercise, up from just 10 before.
Google first showed off the improved tracking earlier this month alongside the Fitbit Edge. It is now coming to Fitbit Air and the Pixel Watch 3, 4, and 5, and Google claims the added context behind the system makes workout detection nearly twice as accurate while cutting missed activities by more than half. Fitbit Edge will support it too.