Although Xiaomi's launch on Wednesday and the Xiaomi 11T family are the talk of the internet. They also blew it up this morning, with their latest high-tech gadget, a smartglass unveiled to our great surprise.
The biggest shock is that it was so well hidden that there were no rumours. Although there was a poster out on Weibo yesterday that we thought was for the Xiaomi 11T phones. We now know it wasn't, it was a smartglass or a feature of one.
Display / lens
The right lens of the glasses is designed to reflect the image of the 0.13″ MicroLED display in the frame towards your eyes. This is achieved by reflection and diffusion of the optical waveguide lens. The display itself is smaller than a grain of rice, but still huge, capable of emitting 2 million nits of brightness.
Functions
The screen on the lens is huge. Although the screen is only green monochrome, which essentially improves the reading of the information, because in nature this colour is negligible. So in all situations and environments, you can see the information clearly. In function, you only get the most important information, such as:
- Hour / Date
- Notifications
- Incoming calls
- GPS navigation
- Translation of text
- Photography
Photography
In addition, the glasses have a camera at the end of the other arm, the resolution of which is currently unknown. But judging by the demonstration video, it can't be too low, because then we wouldn't be able to post it on social media or blogs. It is likely to be 8 MP or more, to be at least as good as the latest Google Glass. To activate it, tap the glasses twice and the picture is taken and sent to your phone.
The smartglasses are also equipped with a microphone, as most functions can be accessed by voice command. Of course, this is only available in Chinese yet, so unless English becomes the default, we're in luck. In addition to instructions, the glasses are also capable of voice translation, even instantly. So we can communicate with friends or partners in a foreign language without having to use our phone.
https://www.facebook.com/XiaomiGlobal/videos/1671114416430188/
The whole pair weighs just 51 grams, slightly more than Google's super glasses. It has a quad-core ARM processor, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. The Xiaomi smart glasses are only compatible with Android at the moment, no iOS support is yet announced.
Glasses are currently only a concept product, not in mass production, so we still have a long way to go before they are available. No price has been announced yet, not even in the Chinese media, so we don't know how it will be sold in the East. We don't think we'll see it at the launch on Wednesday, but it would be nice to see it at a live demonstration. We'll be back with more details as soon as we know more!
Update (14:33)
As more information comes in, Xiaomi is revealing more and more details about the glasses. The latest one is the resolution of its camera, which is exactly 5 MP. It can currently only take still images and turn text. While using the camera, a red blinking LED next to the lens will signal to the outside world that it is recording, thus respecting privacy.
