Facebook and Ray-Ban have joined forces to create a new “best thing” in wearable technology. The question is – what can you do with it and will it be expensive?
Stop for a moment and think about how much our smartphones have changed our private and business lives. Today, it is hard to imagine life without them at all, right? Facebook would not completely agree with thatas it wants phones to become a thing of the past. It joined forces with Ray-Ban, a popular brand of eyeglasses and sunglasses, and co-designed Ray-Ban Stories.
Find out what this technology giant has in mind below…
What Are Ray-Ban Stories?
Ray-Ban has made a trailer to show you what Ray-Ban Stories are. If you don’t want to see it, then in short – ‘smartglasses’ are the result of a luxury brand of sunglasses and technology giant Facebook. The idea behind these glasses is that they can help you capture events around you without having to hold a mobile phone in your hand and watch these events through its screen.
The glasses have two cameras, logically one on the left and one on the right, that will capture the world around you from your perspective. Furthermore, you can use them to take pictures, not just to record, and then when you get home, you can download those pictures/videos to your mobile phone or computer, and upload them to social networks.
Of course, that is not all. These are smartglasses, and Ray-Ban and Facebook want you to use them instead of phones, which means you will be able to play music and podcasts on your glasses while, say, traveling to work, walking around town, or doing some things on your cell phone, like texting, emailing, surfing the Internet, or spinning slots at online casinos that differ by the link from each other in relation to the offer of game developers.
As you yourself certainly got the impression, the point of these smartglasses is that you have the ability to make a video or picture at any time when you see something interesting. You don’t have to reach for the phone, but you can do it with glasses because it is “more natural”. You can show others the world from your perspective because you always have glasses on your head.
Specs
Ray-Ban Stories smartglasses capture the world around them with two 5 MP cameras. You can activate them by lightly pressing the small button located on the side, on the frame of the glasses. If you want to take a picture, press the button a little longer. If you are ‘brave’ enough, you can also say “Hey Facebook, take a video”. But if you are surrounded by people, be aware that you could get very strange looks from them.
If you want to listen to music or make a quick call, the glasses have miniature speakers located near your ears. Facebook has not explained whether people around you can hear what you hear or not. They just said they were “discrete” speakers.
The glasses also have an internal memory where you can store about 30 videos or 500 photos. Once you have full memory, you can transfer pictures and videos to your phone using the Facebook View application. The announcement for glasses didn’t say whether you have to use this particular application or the glasses will work with some third-party apps.
It is great that Facebook will allow you to easily share the images and videos you take on some other platforms as well. For example, you can easily upload multimedia to WhatsApp or Snapchat, and it is possible that there will be some other social networks, or that the glasses will work with other platforms later. Of course, we are talking about the direct sharing of multimedia on platforms. There is nothing stopping you from downloading pictures and videos made with these glasses to your mobile phone, and then uploading them to, say, Twitter or somewhere else.
Finally, let’s mention that the glasses will also have an “Off” button, which will allow you to turn off all the technical functionalities of the glasses at once. Likewise, Facebook is “very proud” of the fact that the glasses will have LED lights so people around you know you are shooting videos and potentially shooting them. It claims that this will increase privacy. In the presentation video, Mark Zuckerberg says “it’s a lot more than smartphones do.” We could discuss whether people will find it easier to notice that you pointed your cell phone at them or notice the small LED lights on your glasses, but about that on another occasion.
How Much Will Ray-Ban Stories Cost?
If this seems like fun to you and you want to own these glasses yourself, don’t worry. You will not have to take a loan for them. Their suggested retail price will be around $ 299. Probably the best thing is that you can buy glasses already today. You just have to go to Ray-Ban’s website and buy them.
If you love filming the world around you and often find yourself in situations that capture important moments to you, it is likely that Ray-Ban Stories will be what you need. Maybe your life will be easier with these glasses, but it is up to you to decide.
