Blink and you missed it: Google has a new pair of prototype AR glasses
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Blink and you missed it: Google has a new pair of prototype AR glasses

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Those glasses a Googler asked Project Astra to find? They’re suspiciously thick… and have a display, perhaps.

By Sean Hollister, a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.

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But we may have written off Google’s Glasses too soon — because Google just revealed a new prototype pair in a blink-and-you-missed-it moment at Google I/O.

In the heat of the moment, I thought the Googler simply donned a pair of normal glasses before pulling out their smartphone at 1:30 in the Project Astra demo video below. But no, those frames are thick.

There’s even a little picture-in-picture moment where you can see them wearing the glasses. Here it is zoomed in:

Google’s new AI / AR glasses prototype.

Google’s new AI / AR glasses prototype.

Google’s new AI / AR glasses prototype.
Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Once the glasses are on, the Googler is using them, not their Pixel phone, to ask questions and get answers hands-free.

Is this a mockup, or might the glasses have a display that can present translucent text?

Is this a mockup, or might the glasses have a display that can present translucent text?

Is this a mockup, or might the glasses have a display that can present translucent text?
Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Are these just repurposed Project Iris prototypes? They seem similar enough, but the ones that Google prominently showed off in its 2022 video had flat nose bridges. The new nose bridge is curved.

Flat nose bridge.

Flat nose bridge.

Flat nose bridge.
Image: Google
Another flat nose bridge.

Another flat nose bridge.

Another flat nose bridge.
Image: Google

Google didn’t tell my colleague David anything about these glasses in our Project Astra interview, but the company doesn’t exactly seem to be hiding them, either. In the YouTube description for the Project Astra video, Google says the second chunk of the demo is running on “a prototype glasses device.”

With Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses proving to be the best AI wearable so far, beating out Rabbit and Humane for utility despite having no screen, it’s not surprising that Google might want to revive its glasses ambitions.

In mid-2022, Google got far enough with its previous prototypes that it planned to start testing them in public — you’ll let us know if you see these ones in your neighborhood, right?

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Sean Hollister

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