Meta has unveiled a new device, which the company sees as the successor to the smartphone. This Orion is shaped like glasses, with some extras.
Meta is not the first company to work on the successor to the smartphone. We previously heard such promises when the AI gadget Rabbit R1 was introduced and that device completely flopped. Yet Meta seems to have a clearer plan for Orion.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled Orion during a presentation at Meta Connect 2024. The device is smart glasses that use augmented reality. Orion is not the size of large VR glasses like Apple’s Vision Pro, but looks much more like normal glasses. That’s important, because unlike the Vision Pro, the Orion should be something you want to wear all day long.
Applications
Meta showed some applications that are not exactly overwhelming. This way you can place virtual screens in your environment and recognize objects via the camera in the glasses in combination with Meta AI. For example, the glasses can represent a recipe based on the ingredients in front of you. But it is not yet about the applications, but about the technology behind it.
Meta calls the screen of a smartphone limited compared to the ability to use your entire environment as a canvas through glasses. However, Orion should not become an extension of that smartphone screen, but should partly replace the smartphone.
For this you need more than just glasses. As you can see in the image above, Orion works together with two accessories. You must wear a band around your arm to record movements of your fingers to control the glasses. You also have to carry an extra device the size of a small glasses case that gives glasses extra computing power.
Not ready yet
Whether glasses like the Orion can really replace the smartphone is doubtful, but if this technology works well it can be more practical than a smartphone in many situations. For example, when you are walking outside, cooking, on the train, doing odd jobs, giving a speech, etc.
A big second question is whether Meta is the party that wants to give you access to your entire world with glasses, because all major tech companies are probably working on similar technology. In any case, Meta would like to be the first. The company says the glasses are not something for the distant future, but sees Orion as part of the “possibilities within reach today.”
Yet Orion is not yet ready for consumers. Meta first wants to make the glasses even smaller, thinner and (not unimportantly) cheaper. The image quality also needs to be improved. In the coming period, Meta employees, among others, will extensively test the glasses to see what else needs to be done.
More glasses
Huawei, among others, is said to be working on its own version of the Vision Pro. And what happened to Google Glass again? Google is now also working on glasses in combination with Gemini, under the name Project Astra.
Source: www.androidplanet.nl
