JAKARTA - Facebook has finally launched smart glasses in collaboration with EssilorLuxottica. Dubbed Ray-Ban Stories, these glasses allow people to shoot videos and photos to post to their social media.
Interestingly, the smart glasses can also receive phone calls and listen to music. Unfortunately, these Ray-Ban Stories don't have VR capabilities, but they're meant to be more than that.
“So much for our experiences, we are given the choice to live in the moment and enjoy it, or reminisce about the moment, stay connected to other people, and we believe this is fundamentally the wrong choice. And our real goal is to help people stay present and connected," said Matthew Simari, director of product at Facebook's Reality Lab.
These smart glasses are equipped with a 5 megapixel dual camera, allowing users to take photos and record videos with voice commands or pressing a button on the right temple of the glasses, there are also speakers in each corner that can be used as headphones to listen to music and podcasts via Bluetooth from a smartphone they connect.
Also equipped with three microphones, so users can talk on the phone. Not only that, there is also a record button, touch panel and power button. The new device is compatible with Facebook Assistant, giving users the opportunity to capture the moment via voice commands and let others around them know what's going on.
Simari also stressed the issue of privacy, trustworthiness and transparency of the new devices, adding that, "the data Facebook collects is really about making sure that the glasses work properly," Simari said.
These smart glasses will allow users to share the content they capture to apps like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp, TikTok, and Snapchat.
Ray-Ban Stories comes with a portable charging case, available in three different models namely the Wayfarer (or Wayfarer Large), Meteor and Round. These smart glasses have a body similar to the original, only weighing five grams more than a pair of Wayfarers that are not embedded in the technology.
“We don't build technology that happens to look like glasses. We are building glasses that happen to have the technology,” Simari said.
For information, Ray-Ban Stories is priced at 299 US dollars or equivalent to Rp. 4.2 million, and will be available on Ray-Ban.com in the US, UK, Italy, Australia, Ireland, and Canada. It is not yet known whether Facebook will also target the Asian region to sell its smart glasses.
This product is a new addition to Facebook's hardware list that already includes the Oculus Quest virtual reality system and Portal video calling smart screen.
So far, Facebook has been trying to bring its smart glasses to compete with other social media, which are also involved in hardware. Like Snap launched its first Spectacles device in 2016, and the ill-fated Google Glass device launched in 2013.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
