At the ongoing Mobile World Congress 2024 (MWC 2024) taking place in Barcelona, Spain, smartphone giant Oppo showcased a new product that is still in a prototype stage. Called the Air Glass 3, the augmented reality eyewear aims to infuse artificial intelligence (AI) into Oppo’s product lineup, while opening the doors to the world of augmented reality. Indeed, this seems to be Oppo’s bet on augmented reality and AI after Apple finally released its Vision Pro headset earlier this year for the US market.
Oppo’s Air Glass 3 isn’t an entirely new concept from Oppo. The Chinese smartphone giant showcased a similar concept called the Air Glass with a unique cicada wing design and a micro-projector back in 2021 at its INNO Day conference in Shenzhen. The company had also showcased the Air Glass 2 at MWC 2023. Ideas seemed to have evolved in the past couple of years into what has been currently showcased at the ongoing MWC 2024.
The Air Glass 3 eyewear looks like a regular pair of glasses but has a built-in display that lets users view digital content pasted onto real-world settings. The augmented reality bit can be used for navigation or even to view incoming messages or calls.
Interacting with the wearable happens both via voice and touch. Oppo claims to have successfully used its own homegrown large language model (LLM) called AndesGPT to power its voice assistant and the necessary generative AI features. The voice assistant for now is only available in China, but can perform basic information searches and have a proper conversations to assist the wearer.
Another way to interact with the Oppo Air Glass 3 wearable is via touch. According to Oppo, users will be able to touch the frame stalks on the sides to interact and navigate with onscreen content which is visible on the full-colour display. The eyewear weighs 50 grams and the display has a peak brightness of more than 1,000 nits. On the frame are four microphones to assist with voice functions and speakers for audio output as well.
More recently, Meta also launched a pair of smart sunglasses in collaboration with Ray-Ban. While these appear similar to the ones announced by Oppo, they rely on a camera and AI to capture photos or video and are mainly designed to stream whatever a user is looking at with the glasses, using ‘Hey Meta’ commands. What the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses lack in comparison to the Oppo’s smart eyewear is a display as it solely relies on voice commands and prompts for control.
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