It seems Facebook is still working on smart glasses with “lots of functionality”

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Facebook’s long-awaited smart glasses will be coming in 2021, without the augmented reality technology that is usually associated with smart glasses. That’s according to Facebook’s hardware chief, Andrew Bosworth, who announced some more details of the partnership with Ray-Ban.

The upcoming smart glasses will need to be connected to another device, like your smartphone, and won’t feature the ability to overlay digital objects into your real-world view. What exactly do they do, then? Well, Bosworth says that they are “certainly connected glasses,” with “a lot of functionality,” without going into any specific details.

Facebook has been working on AR glasses since 2017, so we’re not really sure what the smart glasses will be able to do, without the augmented reality part. Since the initial announcement, Facebook has built some camera features that work in AR, like Snapchat-esque photo filters that work on anything in the real world that the wearer is looking at.

Perhaps the upcoming smart glasses use a vision system to analyze the world around the user, to create what Facebook calls “presence.” That’s their way of describing technology that enhances human interaction, without making the technology the central theme. It’s also possible that the glasses will work as a chronicling tool, taking images and video of those easily-missed slices of life, to ensure memories made with your kids are recorded.

With over 6,000 employees in Facebook’s VR, AR, and hardware teams, it’s clear that the company feels this is the future. Exactly how that future will look is still to be seen.

Have any thoughts on this? Would you use Facebook smart glasses? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.