Snap’s 2024 version of Spectacles for developers. | (Photo by Nalani Hernandez-Melo for The Verge)
Snap plans to start selling its first pair of augmented reality glasses to the public in 2026.
The coming release is part of CEO Evan Spiegel’s decade-plus bet on what comes after the smartphone. He teased it Tuesday onstage at the Augmented World Expo, an augmented and virtual reality developer conference in Long Beach, California.
“Ever since we launched the developer Spectacles nine months ago, folks have been asking, ‘Hey, when’s the public release coming?'” Spiegel tells me ahead of his keynote. Announcing that they’re coming next year gives developers ample time to “think about their timeline for building and polishing the experiences they have,” he says. “And obviously, that’s really important.”
While he’s resistant to offer more details about the hardware, people who have seen prototypes of next year’s glasses tell me they’re noticeably thinner and lighter than last year’s version, which was only available to developers who applied to rent them. They also boast a wider field of view, allowing virtual graphics to fill more of the lenses.
Spiegel won’t tell me how much the glasses will cost, though he does let slip that they’ll be priced less than Apple’s $3,499 Visio …
Read the full story at The Verge.