Sony To Launch Augmented Reality Glasses In March
Let’s set aside HoloLens for a while. Here comes another contender for the augmented reality wars, and this time, it’s from Sony.
Aside from the recent development efforts of Sony on its Project Morpheus virtual reality headset, they also had focused in developing augmented reality (AR) technology. Recently, Sony has announced that they are launching their own take on AR with the SED-E1 SmartEyeglass. This pair of AR glasses will be made as a developer edition, mainly targeting early adopters of their AR tech. The Japanese tech company is set to publicly launch the SED-E1 SmartEyeglass to select countries on March 10. To recall, Google previously made a similar product called the Google Glass, which was also made as a developer edition smartglass. Just like the price of Google Glass, this pair of AR glasses from Sony will be priced just as high: it will carry a price tag of $840. The SED-E1 SmartEyeglass will be made available for preorder in select countries like Germany and the United Kingdom. Sony plans to release the smartglasses to the United States and Japan soon after the initial release.
The pair of AR glasses from Sony has similar features to the Google Glass. It features an overlay that appears to be floating on the glass viewfinder. This overlay provides vital information in real time such as notifications and navigation directions. With this, it serves as a companion device to your smartphone or tablet, connecting via a near field wireless interface which is still uncertain for now. Awkwardly, this smartglass has a wired dongle that contains the processing unit of the glasses, which means you have to deal with wires as you wear it. This dongle has a touch-sensitive panel which lets its user to navigate around the heads-up display, as well as inline controls for receiving calls or responding to messages.
Since the SED-E1 glasses are made as a developer edition AR headgear, it is not targeted for the mainstream consumer. Sony has put up a preorder page on its online stores for Germany and the United Kingdom. Interestingly, aside from early adopters and developers, Sony is also targeting enterprise consumers for the potential business applications of this futuristic pair of smartglasses.
For more information on the SED-E1 SmartEyeglass augmented reality glasses, please visit the following websites:
http://developer.sonymobile.com/products/smarteyeglass/
http://developer.sonymobile.com/2015/02/17/sed-e1-coming/
http://www.cnet.com/news/sonys-google-glass-rival-smarteyeglass-go-on-sale-for-840-or-520/
