Sony’s SmartEyeglass will be released next March

Wearables are becoming a big thing these days, with even the likes of Apple getting in on the fray. The one thing that a lot of companies have yet to get in on are smartglasses, with Google being the only big-name company to have released a set. Sony isn’t willing to let Google dominate it seems and has announced that it’s own smartglasses, first revealed at this year’s CES, will be released next March.

Ignoring the fact that they look ridiculously bulky, the SmartEyeglass will include a 3MP camera, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, an ambient light sensor, and will be compatible with phones running Android 4.1 or above*. The camera will communicate with your phone via Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi, but the glasses themselves also come with a wired controller. That’s right wired. In 2014. It turns out that the battery is stored in the controller, but still come on a wired controller? What’s up with that?

will act as a full-on heads-up-display — unlike Google Glass which just is just in a tiny corner of your field of view. Sony has showed off two examples of this in action which you can see in the video below. The first is facial recognition which can display details of the people you’re looking at in front of your eyes. The other is a ‘city guide’ which will display certain points of interest as you’re walking around. Both is these are concepts at the moment, but it’s likely that they will be fleshed out a bit more in time for release.

Function-wise they do look rather interesting, and capable of far more than what any other smartglasses can offer. That being said, they are rather bulky and do look a bit daft. Sony is going to have to work on that.

*to use the video camera the phone will need to be Android 4.3 or above

Want to read more? Here’s our coverage of the recent Apple announcements, including everything you need to know about Apple’s ‘phablet’, the iPhone 6 Plus, and smartwatches buying guide, or if you’re sick of Apple completely, here’s our rundown of our 14 favourite dating apps, from Tinder to eHarmony.