Samsung has given us our first chance to check out its upcoming smart glasses in person, revealing two new designs and the first specs in the process, including an impressive 9-hour battery life. The glasses, developed in collaboration with Google and the eyewear brands Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, are due to launch this fall.
Google and Samsung have been teasing the new glasses for some time, and revealed the first two designs at I/O in May. Now there are two more frames: Both are unsurprisingly boxy, with a new set of squared off black glasses from Gentle Monster, and a more rounded, red-brown pair from Warby Parker. Jaein Choi, the executive vice president running Samsung’s mobile experience division, told CNBC that there are “more designs” on the way.
This was our first chance to see any of the four frames in person, though Samsung wouldn’t let me try them on — or even hold them up to my face. They’re all impressively light — not much heavier than the thick-rimmed acrylic glasses I used to wear, and barely bigger than them either. Speaker and microphone grilles are hidden along the stems, a single button sits on the right with a power switch tucked inside on the left, and of course there’s a camera and recording LED mounted on the front. Much like Meta’s collaborations with Ray-Ban and Oakley, these basically look like normal glasses most people would happily wear — privacy connotations aside.
The new glasses will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 Gen 1 chip, the same silicon that powers Meta’s latest smart glasses. Samsung says they’ll run for up to nine hours on a single charge, while the accompanying charging case delivers up to seven additional charges.
You’ll be able to use either Google Gemini or Samsung’s Bixby with the glasses, though the AI features themselves sound pretty familiar: message summaries, live translation, navigation guidance, and analysis or description of what’s captured by the cameras.
Speaking of, just like Meta’s, there is a recording LED for when the camera is capturing video. Choi told Bloomberg that, like Meta’s, the glasses will prevent recording if they detect the LED has been blocked or obscured. That hasn’t been enough to prevent Meta’s from being branded “pervert glasses,” so we’ll have to see if Samsung and Google have other plans for tackling what Choi called an “an industry-shared problem.”
Samsung still isn’t revealing a firm release date or price for the upcoming glasses, but Choi described them as a “premium” product.