It looks like we’ll be getting the first details about Facebook’s collaboration with Ray-Ban on a pair of smartglasses later this week.
Ray-Ban’s official website just posted a tease with the date 09/09/2021, suggesting we’ll get more details this Thursday. We can see what’s likely a silhouette of the glasses themselves but, other than that there’s little in the way of details.
The page does allow users to sign up for a ‘Release Notification’, though it’s not clear if the smartglasses might actually launch this week, or we’ll simply get a date for later down the line. Last year Facebook said the glasses would launch in 2021 and, more recently, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reconfirmed they’d be the company’s next hardware launch.
Yesterday Facebook VP of AR and VR, Andrew Bosworth, teased a reveal of the glasses by showing off what looks like a point-of-view recording feature while on vacation with Zuckerberg. You don’t actually see the glasses themselves in the video, though.
Despite Bosworth’s tease, we’re not expecting this Ray-Ban collaboration to include any true augmented reality features, instead likely resembling one of the earlier generations of the Snap Spectacles (which, funnily enough, have already evolved into a pretty impressive prototype AR headset). That said, we’ll need to see the official details on Thursday to know what the device is really capable of. Facebook is working on its own, more advanced AR prototypes, but we don’t expect to see those for years yet.
What are you hoping to see out of the Ray-Ban and Facebook smartglasses? Let us know in the comments below.
