Smooth as Glass

Project Glass: What we know so far

Aug. 14, 2012 (10:00 am) By: Russell Holly

Despite knowing full well that we’re months away from the very expensive developer preview, with another long wait after than for an actual retail product, there’s no shortage of people who would gladly empty their bank accounts to get their hands on Google’s coveted Project Glass.

In terms of bleeding edge hardware wrapped in a unique new concept, you can’t get much more interesting than Project Glass. This wearable computer packed into a pair of eyeglasses is being kept pretty tightly under wraps by the Googlers working on it, but several members of the project have been in Hangouts recently with I/O attendees that joined the Glass Explorers program. As a result, we’ve been able to put together a rough idea of what powers these devices and how they work.

Hardware

As it stands right now, the hardware inside Project Glass is still changing and we know that everything is being fine-tuned and tested constantly. Currently the hardware inside Project Glass units are pretty close to what you would see in a Samsung Galaxy Nexus without the cellular radio. During one of the Hangouts a project member explained that the current iteration is “basically a wifi Galaxy Nexus”.

As things like battery life are being adjusted, the clock speed of the TI OMAP 4460 processor is also being adjusted. Either way, this is hardware that the teams at Google have had plenty of experience with.

Project Glass as worn by David Cardinal

The camera on these units is an unknown variable, since it is one of the pieces that is being heavily tweaked until it delivers the best possible experience. Following the recent Google+ posts from Project Glass members, the camera has really changed a lot. Shots have been posted with a myriad of resolutions, in some posts discussing new features like a timed shot or rapidly repeating shots. Google’s big focus in their early promotion of Glass has been the ability to share things from your perspective, so it makes sense that the camera is receiving nonstop attention.

There’s been very little mention of on-board storage. In fact, during several hangouts now Project Glass members have advised developers to focus on apps that “connect to cloud services and exchange information, but not run locally.” In fact, the system will rely heavily on an internet connection for most of the real functionality and there’s been no mention of an Offline Mode. There’s certainly not going to be any removable storage, either, since the only port on the device is the microUSB port used to charge it.

Most members of the Project Glass team, as well as ExtremeTech’s David Cardinal have said that these units weigh about the same as a good pair of sunglasses, and they are constantly improving the battery life so that we will be able to wear them all day by the time they come out.

Software

Project Glass is not running Android… or ot least, it’s not running Android as we currently know it. None of the Glass team members were willing to discuss the operating system, but the apps that were running on the device already were familiar. After the demonstration at Google I/O this year, and again during the Hangout meetings, it became clear that the devices were capable of running Google + Hangouts from the device. In fact, several of the team members have joined Hangouts from the Glass units and demonstrated that they could see everyone in the Hangout and were completely capable of participating as though they were on the mobile app.

The Project Glass platform will likely never be looked at as a branch of Android, but the developer team has mentioned that the Glass Explorer units will be flexible. Developers have been told they will “be able to flash the device to build whatever you want for it, such as client apps”. It seems likely based on that statement that much of the Project Glass software will be Open Source in order for developers to take Project Glass and use it for specific purpose development.

Navigation

As pretty as the original “one day” video that Google released was, it intentionally left us with way more questions than answers. One of the biggest was navigation. Will it be voice-controlled, gesture-controlled, or use some other form of navigation? As it turns out, the side of the device is a touch panel, and that is used for most of the navigation. Swipe gestures on the trackpad control basic navigation of both the OS and apps, and a single button on the top of the device serves as the action button for everything else you would do while wearing the glasses.

Project Glass is designed to be on your head at all times, but not necessarily meant to be on that whole time. A single gesture — a quick jerk up with your head — turns off the screen and sets the device into a sleep mode. To turn the device back on, you need to press the button on the side. It is unclear if more gestures will be added, or if gesture control is something developers will have access to, but the feature allows you to quickly dismiss whatever it was you were looking at and returns you to reality.

Seeing into the future

Project Glass is still so far away even for those who were able to participate in the Glass Explorers program, but it is clear that Google’s X Team is filled with people truly dedicated to making this experience really unique. We’ve seen plenty of companies try to strap gadgets to our face over the years, but Project Glass is the first that seems to understand that the most successful gadget in this category will be the one that you don’t feel the need to take off.