Snap to release smaller, lighter augmented truth Specs smartglasses in 2026

Snap on Tuesday introduced its plans to free up a sixth-generation of its augmented truth glasses in 2026, as pageant within the good glasses marketplace continues to warmth up. 

The maker of Snapchat mentioned that its next-generation glasses can be referred to as Specs, breaking with the corporate’s Spectacles branding that it used for earlier variations of its wearable units. The Specs will use AR generation to let folks see and have interaction with virtual imagery that is overlaid over the bodily international.

Snap didn’t disclose a worth or precise release date for Specs, however the brand new glasses can be smaller and lighter than their predecessors, the corporate mentioned. Snap’s most up-to-date Spectacles have been launched in September 2024 to builders best. That version of the glasses used to be to be had below a leasing type that required customers to decide to paying $99 a month for a complete 12 months. 

The consumer-focused Specs will run at the corporate’s Snap OS working methods. Snap mentioned that builders will be capable of incorporate Google’s Gemini AI fashions into systems they expand for the good glasses, giving coders extra AI choices to make a choice from as they write instrument for the software. Previously, builders may just best use OpenAI’s GPT circle of relatives of AI fashions to construct AR apps for the good glasses.

“We couldn’t be more excited about the extraordinary progress in artificial intelligence and augmented reality that is enabling new, human-centered computing experiences,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel mentioned in a remark. 

When Snap introduced its first Spectacles glasses in 2016, the $130 wearable used to be restricted to easy options like serving to customers shoot brief movies that they may put up to Snapchat. The corporate up to date its glasses with augmented truth presentations in 2021 that allowed customers to peer digital imagery overlaid by way of the glasses over what customers noticed in the actual international. 

Since then, pageant on this planet of head-mounted computer systems has grown. 

Apple started promoting its $3,500 Vision Pro goggles in February 2024, whilst Meta now has a spread of state of the art merchandise together with Quest VR headsets, Ray-Ban Meta smartglasses and the experimental Project Orion AR glasses, which the social media corporate confirmed off final fall.

Google, in the meantime, introduced its personal access into the distance in May when it printed a $150 million partnership with Warby Parker, which mentioned it’ll free up its personal good glasses someday after this 12 months.