Xiaomi has announced its first smart glasses — uninspiringly named Xiaomi Smart Glasses — that come equipped with a display and support tasks such as calling, navigation, viewing app notifications, and snapping photos, among others. They easily overshadow the recently announced Facebook Ray-Ban Stories in terms of functionality and don’t look half-bad either, but there's a catch: The Xiaomi shades don't really exist yet. This is of course not the first time that Xiaomi has copied a tech giant and created a product that undercuts the rivals in terms of pricing and functionality. Xiaomi has been aping Apple for years, and it is also no coincidence that its smart glasses announcement comes at a time when rumors of Apple’s own AR/VR headset are everywhere on the internet.
But Apple is not the only company that Xiaomi aims to edge past, after overtaking it as the world’s largest smart wearable brand. Google Glass appeared and quickly vanished, Microsoft's HoloLens 2 was relegated to the enterprise market due to sheer cost, while Lenovo has only made a serious attempt at smart glasses in 2021. The only other brand whose smart glasses are currently in the hands of everyday people is Snap and its Spectacles. Xiaomi is doing it because all other key players are doing it, too, but instead of creating a knockoff, Xiaomi actually appears to be the more innovative and ambitious player here.
Before one gets too excited, there’s some disappointing news. The Xiaomi Smart Glasses are a concept at this point in time, and the company currently has no plans of releasing it as a commercial product. However, if Xiaomi ever builds smart glasses based on this concept, there would be a lot to like. For starters, the Xiaomi smart eyewear comes equipped with a 0.13-inch MicroLED display that is linked to a tiny chip and employs optical waveguide technology for displaying content over a wider area. The screen is monochrome, but a peak brightness of 2 million nits ensures that users won’t face any issue viewing content under direct sunlight. The Ray-Ban Stories or Snap's latest spectacles, on the other hand, lack any display.
Xiaomi says its waveguide lens combined with a microscopic structure throughout the eyepiece ensures that the light is safely refracted in front of the eyes. It is worth mentioning here that Xiaomi is going after a single-lens system, which means there’s an interactive display only in front of one eye while wearing the Xiaomi Smart Glasses. The device is compatible with Android, and offers support for Wi-Fi connectivity as well. The Chinese electronics giant, which recently overtook Apple in the wearable market, says its smart glasses are not companion devices but are designed for a future where smartphones are optional.
The Xiaomi concept is more like independent smart eyewear that can accomplish tasks such as snapping photos using the onboard 5MP camera, offer navigation guidance, and real-time translations, among others. There are a couple of beamforming mics and a speaker to facilitate calling. Push notifications from messaging apps, alarms, and productivity apps will be displayed on the MicroLED display. A quad-core ARM processor is at the heart of Xiaomi’s wearable, while the in-house XiaoAi virtual assistant will handle the interactions part via voice commands.
Source: Xiaomi
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