Earlier this week, alongside its Oculus Quest 2 announcement, Facebook revealed Project Aria a research project investigating wearable augmented reality (AR) glasses.
On Wednesday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the first pair of Aria glasses would be launching 2021, however, these will still be dependent on a smartphone. According to the head of Facebook Reality Labs Research Michael Abrash, the dependency on a smartphone could be removed within the next five to ten years and the technology could even supplant smartphones for some people.
In the next couple of years, smart glasses will be dependent on smartphones due to battery life and processing constraints but as technology shrinks, cramming components into glasses could become feasible. Abrash reiterated that these glasses “are still years off. That’s not a 2021 thing. I’m talking about the future.”
While glasses may be able to be used alone in the next decade, it’s unlikely that smartphones will disappear entirely. While glasses will no doubt be capable of performing many of the tasks we need them to do and more, there will be other tasks that are more convenient to complete on a phone screen.
Source: Reuters