The company has also rebranded to Snap, Inc.
About six months ago it was reported that Snapchat were designing smart glasses after they hired nearly a dozen wearable technology experts as well as industrial designers who have worked with Nokia and Logitech. Furthermore, Snapchat acquired Vergence Labs, a company that makes similar gadgets to Google Glass that can record a video of what the wearer sees. The result is Spectacles.
The company revealed that it will sell Spectacles, a set of connected smart sunglasses that record 10-second snippets of video, for $130 sometime this fall. It also rebranded itself as Snap, Inc. — a reflection of a fact that the company is now headed in a new direction. Evan Spiegel, the company’s CEO, revealed the new product in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqkOFLBSJR8
Spectacles have a single button that you press to begin recording your snap. The cameras employ a 115-degree lens, which the company says more closely approximates a person’s field of vision. And the cameras record circular video, an effort to create a playback experience that stimulates your natural point of view. As a result, you can view the video in both landscape and portrait mode!
“When I got the footage back and watched it, I could see my own memory, through my own eyes — it was unbelievable. It’s one thing to see images of an experience you had, but it’s another thing to have an experience of the experience. It was the closest I’d ever come to feeling like I was there again.”
– Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snap, Inc.
Snap, Inc. will reportedly start rolling out the product slowly, but it’s uncertain which markets will receive the product first. Apparently, billboards about the product are already going up. Spectacles, which was designed over the course of many years, will come out in three colours: black, coral and teal. It will naturally be compared to Google Glasses, the so far failed attempt at wearable glasses by the search engine giant.
Source: Wall Street Journal
