TL;DR
- Oppo has announced its new “assisted reality” glasses at Inno Day 2021.
- The wearable called Oppo Air Glass provides heads-up readouts of real-time information to users.
- The Air Glass will debut in China first in early 2022.
Daily wear augmented reality (AR) glasses haven’t really taken off. Arguably, Google Glass scared both consumers and companies away from wearing and developing devices in this field well before the technology could mature. However, Oppo hopes to challenge this perception with its Air Glass, its new “assisted reality” glasses.
The company’s no stranger to AR glasses, having showcased the original bulky AR Glass in 2019 and a more portable, upgraded version a year later. While these two examples focused on immersive content experiences first, Oppo claims the Air Glass is a different concept altogether, offering wearers relevant, real-time data on the fly. Think readouts of your daily agenda, shopping list, turn-by-turn navigation support, real-time health data, live transcriptions, or current weather conditions.
Oppo Air Glass specs
The company describes Air Glass as a heads-up display that attaches to frames with prescription lenses if required. The Air Glass weighs in at 30 grams which Oppo hopes will be light enough to ward off wearers’ discomfort.
A custom microprojector employing a micro-LED setup with a five-piece glass lens is at the center of the device’s functionality. Oppo claims this offers brightness peaks of three million nits, beaming visual information onto two layers of sapphire crystal embedded in the glasses. Users can control the Air Glass using head gestures, touches, or voice commands.
Notably, the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100 powers the Air Glass — a chipset you’ll find in the TicWatch Pro 3. While this chip should provide plenty of computing muscle, Oppo claims the Air Glass will last for only three hours with the display powered on. This extends to 20 hours in standby mode.
Finally, Oppo has also built a primary control hub app for its Android devices and the Oppo Watch to control the Air Glass, while there are also plans for an open SDK for developers.
Pricing and availability
So when can you purchase the Air Glass? Well, not for some time if you live outside China. Oppo notes that the Air Glass will initially go on sale in that country only, but buyers will have to wait until Q1 2022 to grab a pair. Oppo has yet to announce pricing details.
