The latest prototype of Sony's SmartEyeglasses, a head-mounted display used with a smartphone, is on show at this week's IFA electronics show in Berlin.
The device has clear lenses and a thick plastic frame, built that way to hide the electronics, and can project green-colored text across a wide portion of the lens resulting in a very different experience than that of Google Glass.
Whereas the Google product puts a color display in a corner of the wearer's field of vision, the Sony glasses project over a great portion of the lens but the green text and basic graphics shown by the glasses are reminiscent of a computer monitor from the 1980s, albeit at a higher resolution.
The glasses have a bit of a clumsy feel because they are so large and that image isn't helped by an additional wired control unit that houses additional electronics and handles communications with a smartphone.
But the system is still a prototype. Sony hasn't announced any plans to sell it and any eventual commercial product might look very different.
Several apps loaded in a companion smartphone are capable of interacting with the glasses to provide location and context-aware information.
One of the main apps, Wikitude, was demonstrated overlaying the direction and distance of transit stations on the wearer's field of view. A Sony representative said it can also provide additional information when, for example, the wearer looks at a wine bottle.
Cookpad is an app that shows recipe information, allowing the wearer to cook and follow a recipe while avoiding getting dirty hands on a cook book, and Local Life will, for example, provide information about events taking place in the local area.
An additional setting screen in a paired smartphone appeared to indicate it is also possible to display Gmail updates, Facebook posts, RSS feeds, calendar reminders and tweets on the glasses.
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