Wearable Computing & Fashion

Meta is slated to become the first company to release smart glasses that feature a screen for displaying apps and photos. The new pair of smart glasses could be released as early as the end of this year.

According to unnamed sources familiar with the project who spoke to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Meta is working on a pair of premium smart glasses that will be priced at more than $1,000, with the price hovering somewhere around the $1,300 and $1,400 mark.

These smart glasses are gearing up to be industry first as Meta plans on implementing a screen for displaying photos and apps, which is unsurprisingly the main component driving up the total cost of the glasses. According to Gurman, the price hike versus the Ray-Ban Meta Glasses ($299) can be attributed to the monocular panel (screen) located within the right lens's lower-right quadrant.

Visual intelligence could be heading to Apple's smartwatch line up as the company is exploring its implementation into the wearable devices with the additional of cameras.

In his latest Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman explained that Apple is exploring the idea of adding cameras to its smartwatches, which would be paired with visual intelligence features, illustrating Apple's overall intention to integrate AI into its catalog of devices. Gurman explains the main idea of Apple Watches gaining cameras and visual intelligence would be to enable users to query their watch about the surroundings of the user.

The smartwatch feature would be similar to the new Visual Intelligence feature on iPhones, where users can long press the camera button and be presented with a new interface that lets them choose if they want to take a picture of something and have it analyzed by Google Search or ChatGPT. This feature isn't very well known or used due to it currently being locked to the iPhone 16 series, but it's expected to be adopted further when Apple releases iOS 18.4 next month, and it becomes available on the iPhone 15 Pro.

Smartwatches seem to quite often hit the headlines for their lifesaving potential, and Google has just announced the arrival of a feature for its Pixel Watch 3 in the US along these lines.

Yes, the 'Loss of Pulse Detection' functionality - launched last year in the EU - has finally come to watches in the US. It does pretty much what it says on the tin: if the watch fails to detect any pulse at all, it can take action to get the wearer help.

Google tells us:

Garmin have opened their showing at CES 2025 by announcing the Garmin Instinct 3 series of outdoor-focused smartwatches.

Available in both AMOLED and Solar display and packed within durable metal-reinforced bezels - the rugged new lineup caters to both adventurers and athletes alike.Sporting all of the activity and wellness tracking you'd expect from a Garmin watch, the Instinct 3 notably offers a whopping 24 days of battery life in the AMOLED model.

Battery life and a focus on detailed activity tracking are generally the key features that attract users to the Garmin range. To contrast, Apple and Samsung Galaxy Watches generally require charging on a daily basis - prioritizing brighter OLED displays, higher refresh rates, and more extensive smart features/app availability. 

NVIDIA has just filed a patent for AR glasses, which would use an innovative augmented reality display system that transforms optical occlusion through digital holography.

The patent was picked up by "seti_park" on X tagging tech evangelist and XR enthusiast Robert Scoble, with NVIDIA's new AR glasses patent being one of the things that were NOT on my bingo card for 2025.

The patent explains that the backlight-free augmented reality glasses using digital holography would be "implementing sophisticated self-interference techniques with incoherent light, the system achieves superior occlusion performance while significantly reducing power consumption and form factor compared to conventional backlit AR displays. This subtractive display approach marks a fundamental shift from traditional additive AR display methods"

Apple's new flagship Watch Ultra smartwatch will reportedly have non-emergency satellite messaging capabilities, just like the iPhone received earlier this year.

In a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the new Apple Watch Ultra will also be adding the long-rumored blood-pressure monitoring feature. We've heard about satellite messaging on the Apple Watch Ultra before, but Gurman reports that it would work like it does on the iPhone, allowing wearers to send text messages from their Apple Watch Ultra without a 4G/5G or Wi-Fi connection.

Apple is also reportedly removing the Intel cellular modem out of the Watch Ultra, and in its place will use a MediaTek chip, with the new cellular chip expected to be included in "at least some models" in 2025. The new blood-pressure monitoring feature has been in the works for a while, but will be great to see materialize next year.

Gemini 2.0 has arrived, and alongside the announcement of the highly anticipated update of Google's AI companion is a teaser for new AI assistant-powered smart glasses.

Google may very well be preparing to make a smart glasses-related announcement, as the company has teased via a new YouTube video posted to its official channel, "Project Astra," a demonstrative video showcasing the future capabilities of an AI assistant. Currently, in the research prototype phase, Project Astra was detailed by Google DeepMind product manager Bibo Xu, who revealed that a small group of people within Google's Trusted Tester program would be testing Project Astro on the prototype glasses.

Notably, Google's Trusted Tester program consists of members who get to play with Google prototype products, most of which never make it to market, which may have thrown a dampener on the idea of Google releasing these glasses showcased in the above video. However, when asked about the glasses Xu said, "for the glasses product itself, we'll have more news coming shortly."

Casio is a Japanese brand with a long history of creating iconic analog and digital watches. In 1974, the company released the first wristwatch with an LCD. In 1980, it released its revolutionary calculator watch, followed up in 1984 with a watch with enough memory to store up to 10 phone numbers. And to celebrate 50 years of creating digital timepieces, Casio is releasing a digital smart ring watch that draws inspiration from its classic watches.

With a tiny LCD screen that can display hours, minutes, seconds, and the current timezone or act as a stopwatch, it's like a micro Casio watch for your finger. The casing and bezel are made from polished stainless steel, which even mimics the flexible wristband look of a classic silver-colored Casio watch from the 1980s.

It's a fantastic retro wearable that will undoubtedly be one of those things you either immediately fall in love with or brush off as silly and pointless. I fall into the former category; I've always thought Casio watches looked cool - even in calculator form.

Amazon is reportedly working on a pair of smart glasses designed specifically for delivery drivers, as the company is looking for a method to reduce the time it takes for a delivery to reach its destination.

The unannounced project comes from Reuters in an exclusive report that cites people familiar with the project who spoke under the condition of anonymity due to the project's confidential nature. According to the report, the new smart glasses are designed to assist drivers with the final stretch of the delivery journey, the steps taken from the courier vehicle to the customer's door. While this may sound like the simplest part of the journey, it's actually a major concern of Amazon's as there are many things that can occur during this period that can result in delays that stack up over the course of a day.

Amazon's delivery smart glasses would provide drivers with turn-by-turn navigation on a small embedded screen. The heads-up display (HUD) would inform drivers of their route and each stop within the screen. An example of this would be a driver being required to go up an elevator. The glasses would be able to provide left and right directions for the driver once the elevator doors open to the correct level. Additionally, the glasses would be able to navigate drivers around obstacles such as gates, fences, and even aggressive dogs.

A new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a known Apple insider and industry analyst, claims the Cupertino company is working on a new health app designed to monitor blood sugar levels.

According to Gurman's trusted Apple employees were given access to the new application that was described as "highly secretive". This new application was also described as a food-logging app, and Apple selected some employees who were prediabetics, requiring them to submit their blood sugar measurements and food intake. Presumably, the logging of the food will inform the user when their blood sugar levels are spiking/crashing.

Ideally, Apple wants to be able to create a noninvasive method of monitoring blood sugar levels, and according to Gurman, the company has been working on it for more than 10 years. However, it's reportedly not ready as Apple is suffering from issues with shrinking the size of the monitor while also keeping it operational without overheating.