Review of Google Glass by Engadget.
It’s been about a year since Sergey Brin
introduced Glass to the world with an amazing
demonstration of Google IO featuring skydiving and
mountain biking. We’re not going to do anything
quite that exciting today but I do wanna try to
give you an idea of what it’s like to wear Glass
in the real world. It’s an incredibly promising
technology but it’s also one that’s got some
pretty strong challenges to overcome.
So what do you get for your fifteen hundred
dollars? You get a headset that can give you
navigation, and that’s perhaps the most compelling
argument for using this device, to give you heads
up display of the map and where’re you going, but
it’s only walking, driving and bicycling. Public
transportation unfortunately is not included yet.
You can also get emails and text messages read to
you. When you receive a message, you get a sign in
your ear and all you need to do is look up and it
will display the text of that message to you. You
can, with a couple of tabs, have it read to you
using text or voice and if you like, you can try
and respond to that as well using voice
recognition, however we've had some pretty mixed
results in that sense. Some unfortunate emails,
thanks to some misinterpreted speech. There are
other functionalities, you can use Google Search
as well. If it’s a simple search like the weather,
it’ll read back the results for you too. You can't
do full search thing of webpages, you can't watch
video on here, you can't do a lot of things that
you can do on your smartphone, and perhaps, most
importantly, you do need to keep your phone with
you. Mine right now is paired to my Note II over
Bluetooth and there is an important thing that you
need to know about Bluetooth paired with your
phone. This is effectively another device, it is
like wearing another smartphone on your head, but
it doesn't have a cellular connection. To pair to
your phone you're going to need to use tethering,
and depending on your carrier you may need to pay
extra for that service.
I am now paying extra 40 dollars a month just for
the privilege of using Google Glass on my face,
that makes this fifteen hundred dollar device a
lot more expensive. Getting a little rainy out
there while we’ve seen some torture tests that
indicate these are fairly weather proof, we're
gonna keep it safe and stick around. There are
some other limitations that you should be aware
of, most notably the battery life. Google says
this could last all day long, but we’ve actually
seen a maximum of about five hours with what we
can consider average usage: taking pictures, short
videos, reading some e-mails. If you do a lot of
video taking or picture taking, you can actually
kill this thing with under 2 hours which might be
for the best. Google recommends for the first
week, at least, to wear it for about an hour a day
due to eye strain. We haven't really noticed a lot
of eye strain using this, because this actually
does focus pretty far out in front of the display,
but still you don’t want to wear it for a long
time when you’re first getting used to it anyway.
Thank you. Now there's one key issue that we
haven't talked about yet with Google Glass, and
that's privacy. Right now I’m recording a video
view or this kind of I.V. anyway and you have no
way of knowing it. There's no LED in the front
that's blinking, or anything like that that's
giving information that I'm capturing footage.
I’ve definitely noticed people are a little bit
worried when I’m around them, that I am actually
filming them without them knowing it. Right now
it’s not such an issue because there are so few of
these but when people start wearing them into
bathrooms or at movie theatres, I think there
could be a problem...
introduced Glass to the world with an amazing
demonstration of Google IO featuring skydiving and
mountain biking. We’re not going to do anything
quite that exciting today but I do wanna try to
give you an idea of what it’s like to wear Glass
in the real world. It’s an incredibly promising
technology but it’s also one that’s got some
pretty strong challenges to overcome.
So what do you get for your fifteen hundred
dollars? You get a headset that can give you
navigation, and that’s perhaps the most compelling
argument for using this device, to give you heads
up display of the map and where’re you going, but
it’s only walking, driving and bicycling. Public
transportation unfortunately is not included yet.
You can also get emails and text messages read to
you. When you receive a message, you get a sign in
your ear and all you need to do is look up and it
will display the text of that message to you. You
can, with a couple of tabs, have it read to you
using text or voice and if you like, you can try
and respond to that as well using voice
recognition, however we've had some pretty mixed
results in that sense. Some unfortunate emails,
thanks to some misinterpreted speech. There are
other functionalities, you can use Google Search
as well. If it’s a simple search like the weather,
it’ll read back the results for you too. You can't
do full search thing of webpages, you can't watch
video on here, you can't do a lot of things that
you can do on your smartphone, and perhaps, most
importantly, you do need to keep your phone with
you. Mine right now is paired to my Note II over
Bluetooth and there is an important thing that you
need to know about Bluetooth paired with your
phone. This is effectively another device, it is
like wearing another smartphone on your head, but
it doesn't have a cellular connection. To pair to
your phone you're going to need to use tethering,
and depending on your carrier you may need to pay
extra for that service.
I am now paying extra 40 dollars a month just for
the privilege of using Google Glass on my face,
that makes this fifteen hundred dollar device a
lot more expensive. Getting a little rainy out
there while we’ve seen some torture tests that
indicate these are fairly weather proof, we're
gonna keep it safe and stick around. There are
some other limitations that you should be aware
of, most notably the battery life. Google says
this could last all day long, but we’ve actually
seen a maximum of about five hours with what we
can consider average usage: taking pictures, short
videos, reading some e-mails. If you do a lot of
video taking or picture taking, you can actually
kill this thing with under 2 hours which might be
for the best. Google recommends for the first
week, at least, to wear it for about an hour a day
due to eye strain. We haven't really noticed a lot
of eye strain using this, because this actually
does focus pretty far out in front of the display,
but still you don’t want to wear it for a long
time when you’re first getting used to it anyway.
Thank you. Now there's one key issue that we
haven't talked about yet with Google Glass, and
that's privacy. Right now I’m recording a video
view or this kind of I.V. anyway and you have no
way of knowing it. There's no LED in the front
that's blinking, or anything like that that's
giving information that I'm capturing footage.
I’ve definitely noticed people are a little bit
worried when I’m around them, that I am actually
filming them without them knowing it. Right now
it’s not such an issue because there are so few of
these but when people start wearing them into
bathrooms or at movie theatres, I think there
could be a problem...
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