Sony is continuing where the Google Glass headset left off, by putting its own augmented reality headset on sale. The developer edition, model number SED-E1, of SmartEyeglass has become open to pre-order in the United Kingdom and Germany with sales in Japan the United States, and six other countries coming soon, with Sony expecting to ship the $840 head-mounted device in March.
Using two clear 3mm-thick lenses with with “hologram optics technology,” the SmartEyeglass can display an 8-bit greyscale green-colored image, such as text or simple pictures, with a resolution of 419×138. While Glass used a small screen covering one eye, Sony’s solution displays images in front of both eyes, though it stops short of superimposing over real-world objects like Microsoft’s Hololens system.
Accompanying the 77-gram (2.71-ounces) glasses is a small round controller, attached via cable, which is used to navigate through the display’s menus with swipes. Connecting to a smartphone over Bluetooth 3.0 and Wi-Fi with NFC pairing, the entire system includes a speaker, microphone, a 3-megapixel camera capable of both still images and QVGA-resolution video without sound, and an assortment of other sensors.
Initial apps supplied with the headset will provide access to Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, a calendar, RSS reader, and a voice recognition system. Sony has also released a software development kit, updating a previous preview edition, which will provide access to APIs, an emulator, and various guides for apps to use the SmartEyeglass.
