Author 丨 Qiu Xiaofen
Edited by Su Jianxun
After two consecutive years of concept machines, at this year's "Future Technology Conference", OPPO finally released a real smart glasses product and joined the AR brawl.
In order to catch up with the release of Apple and Xiaomi, OPPO has obviously taken some compromises.
OPPO's first smart glasses OPPO Air Glass is not strictly speaking, an AR glasses in the true sense. At the press conference, OPPO also meaningfully defined this glasses as "aR glasses" instead of "AR glasses", and the letters changed from uppercase to lowercase, with completely different meanings. The latter is "Augmented Reality," or augmented reality, while the former's "a" is assisted, suggesting that it's more of a product that needs to be paired with other hardware to work.
This is true. OPPO Air Glass uses a monocular design instead of the common binocular type, that is, only one eye has ar display function. The structure itself is relatively simple, the 1.3mm thickness lens acts as a small curtain, and a short bing is connected to the back of the lens, connected to the optical machine, the small sound, and a magnetic suction area. Glasses themselves cannot be used alone and need to be paired with an spectacle frame.
Lenses, lens holders
This design has certain realistic considerations. The needs of the C-end are various, the intelligent part and the glasses themselves are split, whether the user wears glasses or not, the degree is high, the glasses themselves have a simpler and more direct adjustment program. Moreover, compared to those thick, strangely shaped AR glasses, oppo Air Glass looks more like a normal glasses.
These are the ingenuities of OPPO's first glasses, but the compromises are also quite obvious.
In order to fall to the light, some sacrifices were made
At present, the constraint that restricts AR glasses to the C end is how to control the weight while taking into account the performance of use, it is difficult to have both fish and bear paws, and this oppo as a whole has fallen to the former.
Continuing the idea of making mobile phones, thin and light this time is also the biggest selling point of OPPO Air Glass, the overall weight of only 30g, is currently one of the lightest products in the industry - and the general AR glasses weight is often three or five hundred grams, equivalent to the weight of two mobile phones hanging on the head; in addition, for supplementing the light damage under the diffractive light waveguide, the miniature optical machine embedded in the glasses is only the size of a coffee bean.
The advantage of the monocular design is that the weight is halved at the same time, but the cost is also halved. Some industry insiders told 36Kr that the solution of monocular AR glasses in the industry has been quite mature, and the cost of Bom can be controlled within one thousand yuan. It is foreseeable that by the time Q1 is officially released next year, this will most likely not be a sky-high product similar to the thousands of dollars of Google Glass.
AR glasses rapid C-end popularity, cost reduction, weight reduction, morphological universality are the key, and before there is a breakthrough in optical technology, these problems may be solved by monocular, therefore, not only OPPO, Xiaomi's previously released glasses concept machine also follows the same idea.
However, monocular design also has some unavoidable flaws. First of all, the single eye determines that the field of vision seen by the two eyes is not consistent, and some industry insiders told 36Kr that this also has the possibility of affecting vision and is not suitable for long-term wear.
In addition, the monocular itself also has hardware limitations - the problem of the battery can still be solved, OPPO data shows that the glasses themselves can reach 10.5 hours of battery life. The more difficult problem to solve is that the display area of monocular glasses is only a small piece, and the field of view angle is not large, which leads to the fact that monocular AR glasses cannot achieve complex AR functions like binocular glasses.
According to the experience of 36Kr, oppo Air Glass this time shows the functions including navigation, telepromption, shop visits, etc., the emergence of information is only in the form of green text, and the previous Google Glass can not appear animation, video and other complex information. Taking navigation as an example, the text parameters of compass, bearing and distance appear on the screen.
Wear and actual display
Another cost of thin and light monocular design is that OPPO Air Glass is not a screen that can be completely independent of the phone. 36Kr found that switching between oppo Air Glass's different functions, such as cutting from navigation to teleprompter, needs to rely on an app installed on the phone to achieve.
However, as an auxiliary product, OPPO also tried to interact with glasses and other IoT products this time. Specifically, one of the four interaction methods of OPPO Air Glass is that when using oppo watches together, users can confirm/cancel the glasses information through the rotation/fist of the palm.
Spectacle leg touch area interaction and voice these two are the more common interactions of current glasses products, OPPO glasses another more interesting is the head movement control - for example, when there is a phone in, the head can be hung up, in addition, the user can open / close the notification bar information by looking down and looking up.
Overall, in terms of weight reduction and interaction, OPPO's exploration of AR smart devices is acceptable, but the hardware limitations of monocular glasses themselves are indeed difficult to avoid, which is also doomed to monocular can only be used as a transition stage before AR is fully pushed to the C-end.
Google paves the way for "lessons in blood"
The grandfather of monocular AR glasses is Google's Google Glass, but Google's smart glasses road can be described as bumpy - at the beginning of its birth, Google Glass was once selected as the "Best Invention of 2012" by Time magazine in the United States, and the good times were not long, and after successively launching several highly criticized products, it was forced to announce the suspension of production in 2015.
Although Google ended dismally, it gave follow-up manufacturers a lot of reference value. First of all, the biggest problem with Google Glass's design is that the projection position is positioned in the corner of the eye, and the user needs to roll the right eyeball when using it, "rolling the eyes" "let the user feel the social pressure at the same time, there is also the risk of distraction."
OPPO's first eyewear products have been adjusted accordingly. The 36Kr experience found that the imaging position of OPPO Air Glass was placed directly in front of the right eyeball, although it used Mirco-LED that could support higher displays, the actual brightness presented was only 1400 nits on average, so there was no discomfort such as visual occlusion when it was actually used.
However, one of the flaws of OPPO glasses is that when they are used, the outside world can see the content displayed inside the wearer's glasses, and there is room for improvement in privacy.
When used, the text inside the glasses can be seen from the outside
In addition, what was not mentioned at the press conference was that the complete OPPO Air Glass actually included a camera module embedded in the left spectacle frame. The AR glasses for the C side, once the camera is configured, the privacy issue will be repeatedly mentioned, which is also an important reason for the collapse of Google Glass - due to the potential infringement of portrait privacy problems, some offices in the United States, even once banned the wearing of Google Glass.
For AR glasses, the camera can achieve more intelligent perception, equivalent to the glasses themselves have eyes, but at the moment when privacy is becoming more and more important, especially on the eve of the outbreak of C-end AR products, Google's "blood lesson" needs to be repeatedly considered.
The complete OPPO Air Glass consists of three parts: frame + single AR lens + camera The picture was taken by 36Kr
What exactly is the function of AR is also a question that does not have a clear answer at present. From the concept machine previously released by Xiaomi, as well as the first glasses of OPPO this time, the supported functions still look relatively simple, whether it is navigation, speech teleprompter, or translation, although these are the differentiated functions of watches /bracelets, they are not just needed. For both, finding killer apps is still a long-term homework.
But from another point of view, OPPO's first glasses, although it has done a lot of subtraction, is still a product with a certain insight into the needs of the C-end. In addition to the glasses are light enough, the shape is normal and there can be a hint of fashion, if the future can find enough applications to hit the user's pain points, and then reduce the price, it will not be too difficult to start.
Extended reading: "Product Observation丨 Apple smart glasses have not yet come, Xiaomi and Facebook decided to test the water first"
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