[CEATEC 2014] You know what they say – two’s company, three’s a crowd. While Google Glass looks as though it rules the roost at this point in time where the smart glass market is concerned, this does not mean that other companies should just quit from making an attempt even. After all, with this particular arm of the wearable tech industry still in its infancy, who knows, some other company apart from Google might actually come up with a killer app that everybody wants but nobody knew they needed it? Toshiba has revealed their Toshiba Glass device that continues to maintain the smart glass signature design – which is not a good thing, actually, as there is a bulge located on the right side of the frame’s arm which holds the computing module.
The display on the Toshiba Glass does make an appearance in a more direct manner where your field of vision is concerned, and right now Toshiba hopes for it to be able to deliver short-term weather alerts (very useful in Japan when you consider how the weather here can get all crazy at times, typhoons and all), fitness tracking, for cooking purposes and others. The Toshiba Glass is a whole lot more aesthetically pleasing, however, since it comes with a wide option of frames to choose from, looking discreet in their own right, although the right sided bulge does give the game away that this is a smart glass at but a glance.
A tiny lightweight projector will be attached there, and this projector sends images onto a series of thin, vertical prisms, which in turn will reflect the light back to the wearer’s eye – resulting in an augmented reality display. It will arrive in standard, sporty and industrial frames, and at the CEATEC showfloor, the glasses’ prototype still remained connected to a smartphone via wire, although it drains battery life from your smartphone which makes a portable power bank all the more important.
It remains to be seen whether the Toshiba Glass will ever make it to the market, and for how much, but hints have been dropped that Japan ought to receive it next year, alongside folks who live in North America.
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