AR in Focus: Xiaomi Smart Glasses

Just a week after Facebook released its much-anticipated smart glasses in collaboration with Ray-Ban, Chinese electronics firm Xiaomi has entered the fray with a pair of specs all its own. With Apple aiming to dominate the smart glasses market once its long-in-development device reaches stores, Xiaomi could spur manufacturers to more advanced smart glasses design.

Xiaomi’s smart glasses were unveiled without a price tag or street date, relegating them to ‘concept only’ status. What’s under the hood may determine whether Xiaomi’s glasses reach consumers or not; and how threatening it may be to other hardware manufacturers. An Android-powered device offering far more than Facebook’s social-media-posting tech, Xiaomi’s glasses run on a quad-core ARM processor and pack a battery, touchpad control surface, 5-megapixel camera, a MicroLED display, and both WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Unlike the Facebook/Ray-Ban Stories, the Xiaomi Smart Glasses can project a display before a user’s right eye, stepping into the realm of Augmented Reality and effectively beating Facebook and Apple to the punch.

A Brand New View

Most likely geared towards providing consumers with additional information about their real-world environment and to keep them connected to social media and communication tools, Xiaomi Smart Glasses show a HUD (heads-up display) that overlays info against the user’s surroundings. With obvious extensions into shopping, health and fitness, and the endless array of DIY fields, this kind of unobtrusive display has been theorized for decades; now, it’s finally here.

As social media platforms and non-mainstream payment systems have expanded the world of porn, both 2D and 3D, we can also expect the proliferation of such AR tech as Xiaomi’s glasses to push porn into a new era of accessibility. While it’s unlikely you’ll be watching CGI virtual monster porn discreetly as you sit through a long meeting, AR glasses can and will let you more casually peruse AR porn that’s slightly less intense. Share your commute with a virtual vixen and try to keep your eyes on the road or enhance a beautiful natural vista by placing some stunning beauties around the scene. Limits, like rules, are made to be broken – AR will radically change the boundaries of personalized entertainment.

Winning the Concept Wars

Xiaomi’s glasses are merely a concept at this point in time. Whether the device will eventually make it into stores and onto consumers’ faces remains to be seen. What we do know for sure is that those waiting patiently for a truly revolutionary AR-equipped pair of smart glasses will have to wait a bit longer.