UPDATED 9/9, 5 p.m. ET: Facebook has officially launched what it’s calling Ray-Ban Stories, a.k.a. “smart glasses that give you an authentic way to capture photos and video, share your adventures, and listen to music or take phone calls.” Facebook’s smart glasses start at $299 and come in 20 style combinations.
Features teased by FB include dual 5-megapixel cameras that can take up to 30-second videos, hands-free Facebook Assistant voice command functionality, and “hard-wired capture LED lights up to let people nearby know when you’re taking a photo or video.” Users will also enjoy open-ear speakers, three microphones, and “beamforming technology and a background noise suppression algorithm [that] provide for an enhanced calling experience like you’d expect from dedicated headphones.”
Get a look at the glasses here:
Ray-Ban Stories will work with FB’s new View app as well.
See original story below.
While the specifics of the design remain a mystery, Mark Zuckerberg says the next hardware release from Facebook will be its long-teased smart glasses with Ray-Ban.
Zuckerberg’s comments came during an earnings call on Wednesday, per a transcript from the crowed-sourced finance market site Seeking Alpha.
“Looking ahead here, the next product release will be the launch of our first smart glasses from Ray-Ban in partnership with EssilorLuxottica,” Zuckerberg, who also spoke on his aim to craft “the metaverse experience,” said Wednesday. “The glasses have their iconic form factor, and they let you do some pretty neat things. So I’m excited to get these in people’s hands and to continue to make progress on the journey towards full augmented reality glasses in the future.”
As S. Shah pointed out in Engadget’s coverage, this is far from the first time we’ve heard something regarding Facebook’s glasses-based ambitions. Back in 2019, the glasses were rumored to be designed with the intention of one day becoming an all-out replacement for one’s phone.
The chatter around the glasses has changed since then, with key details on the product—which was also teased in a short Ray-Ban video last year—remaining largely under wraps. Given Zuckerberg’s latest comments, however, it seems likely the product will not be the full-fledged AR glasses that Facebook is angling to make the industry standard.
Complex has reached out to a rep for Facebook for comment and will update this post accordingly.
In June, Zuckerberg took heat for comments he made regarding art and media of the physical variety while speaking on his AR-focused plans for the coming years.
“You know basically any media, any art, any screen for any TV in the future won’t actually need to exist physically,” Zuckerberg said at a tech conference in France last month. “It can just be an app that your glasses project onto the wall.”
