Oppo Air Glass Assisted Reality Smart Glass and MariSilicon X dedicated imaging neural processing unit (NPU) were launched on the first day of the annual Oppo Inno Day event in China. The glass is lightweight and has a single glass design. It is equipped with a custom projector and has a sapphire crystal glass protection on top. Meanwhile, MariSilicon X is aiming to revolutionize photography with Oppo smartphones. Oppo says the NPU is energy efficient and its highlight is the ability to capture 4K videos at night. Reports also suggest that the Chinese company is also expected to launch a foldable smartphone.
Oppo Air Glass price, availability
Oppo Air Glass price is not yet known. The company said Tuesday at its virtual Inno Day conference that the smart glass will be a limited-edition device and will be available only in China in the first quarter of 2022. Without giving a clear timeline, the company also said the smart glass SDK is also coming soon.
Oppo Air Glass Features, Specifications
Yi Xu, Director, XR Technology, Oppo called the new Air Glass a portable, practical and accessible device. It is equipped with the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100 platform and weighs 30 grams. The Assisted Reality Glass features a single glass design and features a Spark Micro projector with micro LED that throws the information onto two layers of a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal. The proprietary projector is built with a five-lens projection system. On the other hand, the Sapphire Crystal uses a custom-built diffractive optical waveguide under the hood that is claimed to provide a 256-level grayscale display area along with a peak brightness of 1,400 nits.
Oppo Air Glass is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 4100 SoC
Photo credit: Oppo
When asked about the feasibility of the lens design for all users, Xu told Gadgets 360 that the company is also launching frames in black and silver with a magnetic strip on the right leg. While the black color option will have a full-frame design, the Silver variant will have a half-frame. Both will be available in two different sizes. The Oppo Air Glass is designed to stick on the temple as standard and can be easily used by eyeglass wearers.
Oppo says the Air Glass can connect seamlessly with Oppo smartphones and smartwatches. Once connected, users can adjust settings such as brightness and sound volume directly on the glass. Users can also wirelessly disable notifications or launch and close apps using the monitoring app installed on their phone or smartwatch.
The wearers of the Air Glass can use touch, voice and head gestures to control the notifications. While explaining the head gestures, the Oppo director said wearers can gently nod their heads to open a notification and shake their heads back and forth to dismiss the notification. Users can also view notifications in full by tapping the Air Glass’s touch bar on the side. In addition, the glass makes it possible to switch between multiple apps by swiping along the touch bar.
In addition to real-time notification alerts, the Air Glass can be used to check weather updates and calendar meetings.
Other features include a teleprompter mode and a translation mode. Users can tap the touch bar to move translated text on the glass. Oppo is also testing hand gesture tracking with the Oppo Watch, allowing users to move text around using hand gestures.
Oppo said the Air Glass converts the voice into text and then translates it into a preferred language.
When released, the glass will support translation between Chinese and English, although Oppo has promised to add support for Korean and Japanese languages soon.
Oppo Air Glass also offers a navigation function that can be used by people while walking or running, as well as while cycling. Oppo has teamed up with Baidu for Baidu Maps for the navigation feature.
The Air Glass comes with support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity and includes a speaker and dual microphones. Oppo claimed that the glass would become the third screen for consumers – after smartphones and smartwatches.
Oppo MariSilicon X Features
Oppo MariSilicon X NPU is manufactured on a 6nm advanced process node and features Tera bps dedicated memory bandwidth, Oppo says. The NPU has a 20-bit Ultra HDR image signal processor and is claimed to be the most energy efficient image NPU (11.6 TOPS/W energy efficiency). It features RGBW Pro mode that essentially helps the NPU capture 4K Ultra HDR (1,000,000:1) video and 4K Night Video, Oppo says.
