Facebook’s first smart glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban are coming soon but don’t get too excited yet

• Facebook plans to launch its first smart glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban.
• The smart glasses will keep the iconic look, and it will be able to do some “pretty neat things”.
• This isn’t to be mistaken with AR glasses as it won’t actually let you project digital objects onto the real world.

Facebook last year announced that it is partnering with Ray-Ban to launch its first pair of smart glasses. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed at the company’s Q2 earnings call that its next product launch will be the smart glasses. There is no official launch date yet but we’re expecting to see the Facebook smart glasses this year.

The first time we heard about Facebook’s AR glasses was back in 2017. This will be the first product release from the social media giant’s work in the futuristic glasses department. But it won’t actually be AR glasses as it won’t let users overlay digital objects onto the real environment, Bloomberg had reported earlier this year. Facebook is also not calling it AR glasses and instead sticking to smart glasses. Zuckerberg did not reveal any details about the smart glasses other than saying that it will “let you do some pretty neat things”. According to a CNBC report, Facebook’s smart glasses would let users take calls, display information and also live-stream their vantage point. The glasses are also designed to replace smartphones, the report added.

Classic smart glasses

Zuckerberg also said that the smart glasses will have their iconic form factor so we’re looking at a classic Ray-Ban design. This is also expected to help with the company’s development of true AR glasses in the future. Facebook is currently working on Project Aria, its research project for futuristic AR glasses. This is where we expect to see Facebook’s true AR glasses but the development could take years.

The smart glasses are still a project under Facebook Reality Labs like Project Aria. We can possibly expect the Facebook smart glasses to offer a similar experience to the Snap Spectacles and the Amazon Echo Frames. The Snap Spectacles are basically camera glasses that let you capture photos and videos but you still need a smartphone to use Snap’s AR effects. The Amazon Echo Frames have Alexa built-in so you can let it carry out different skills and tasks. Snapchat actually launched its first Spectacles AR glasses this year that lets creators project their work onto the world around them. This is however limited to creators, and not available for commercial use. It will be interesting to see how Facebook’s smart glasses stand out from these iterations of wearable technology.

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