{"slug": "larry-magid-smart-glasses-come-into-focus-at-augmented-world-expo", "title": "Larry Magid: Smart glasses come into focus at Augmented World Expo", "summary": "At the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, companies including Meta and Snap showcased smart glasses that resemble regular eyewear but feature advanced augmented reality capabilities, such as heads-up displays and AI assistance. Meta demonstrated its Ray-Ban Meta Display glasses with a built-in display for notifications and translations, while Snap CEO Evan Spiegel introduced SPECS, AR glasses that overlay digital content onto the real world using hand gestures. The event highlighted significant progress in making smart glasses more practical and consumer-friendly, with Qualcomm also exhibiting underlying chip technologies for future AR products.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...I’ve attended several Augmented Word Expos (AWE) since the first one in 2010. Even back then, there was talk about smart glasses that could superimpose computer generated images over the “real world.” But the actual products were not only few and far between, but primitive, bulky and clearly not ready for mass adoption.\n\nThis year’s [AWE conference](https://www.awexr.com/), held at the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center, demonstrated how far things have come. Several companies were showing off smart glasses, which look pretty much like regular prescription or sun glasses but with sophisticated electronics that enable them to sense what is around you and report back either through speakers or, in some cases, see through displays embedded into the lenses.\n\nA few weeks ago, I [reviewed](https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/05/07/larry-magid-meta-smart-glasses-see-hear-translate-and-take-pictures/) the Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 smart glasses, and I’ve also had a chance to try Meta’s newer Ray-Ban Meta Display glasses. Like the Ray-Ban Meta glasses I own, they look much like ordinary eyewear and include a camera, speakers, microphones, and Meta AI. They can answer questions about what you’re looking at, take photos and videos, translate speech and text, handle calls and messages, play music and provide AI assistance without requiring you to pull out your phone.\n\nWhat sets the $799 Display model apart is a small heads-up display built into one lens. It can show notifications, directions, translations and responses from Meta AI while allowing you to keep your attention on the world around you. It can also be used as a teleprompter.\n\n**Snap pushes smart glasses forward**\n\nSnap, the company behind the popular Snapchat social network, entered the wearable market in 2016 with Spectacles, camera-equipped sunglasses for Snapchat users. It has updated them over the years, and at AWE, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel introduced SPECS, an impressive new augmented-reality product.\n\nSpecs can display virtual screens, interactive 3D objects, games, educational content, navigation cues and AI-powered assistance, unlike glasses that simply show notifications or text, Specs are designed to blend digital experiences with a user’s real-world surroundings. A key part of Snap’s strategy is Lens Studio, a developer platform that lets third parties create augmented-reality experiences, known as Lenses.\n\nI had a chance to briefly try out the new Specs. I took a virtual trip on the Apollo moon mission and played a game called Fruit Defense. It wasn’t enough to fully test out the glasses, but I did get a feel for how you can see computer-generated images superimposed on your physical environment and use hand and finger gestures in lieu of a pointing device.\n\nAt his AWE keynote, where he introduced Specs, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel described them as “a computer that understands the world around you instead of pulling you out of it.”\n\nHe contrasted the experience of looking down at a phone screen with the promise of augmented-reality glasses that can understand a user’s surroundings and provide information without disconnecting them from the real world. His vision is that computing should become part of our environment rather than compete with it for our attention. That theme ran throughout his keynote, and he summed it up with, “the smartphone put our lives in our pockets. But augmented reality puts computing into the world where life actually happens.”\n\n**Component makers**\n\nAs I walked through the AWE expo hall, I saw several companies demonstrating smart glasses as well as the underlying technologies that could power future products from a wide range of manufacturers.\n\nQualcomm, whose Snapdragon chips power many of today’s smartphones and an increasing number of PCs, had a large exhibit showcasing technologies that could enable other companies to create smart glasses and other augmented-reality products, just as their chips enable phone and PC makers to create products. One prototype I experienced could identify a person simply by looking at their face and then display their name and background information. In its current implementation, it only recognizes people who are already in the user’s contacts. That not only eliminates the need for access to a massive face-recognition database but also serves as an important privacy safeguard by preventing users from identifying random people they encounter.\n\nOthers pitching their technology to would-be smart glasses makers included Himax, a Taiwanese company with a tiny display module that can project information into smart glass lenses as well as eye-tracking technology.\n\nAnother exhibitor was FemtoAI which, said its chief business officer, Bill Hoppin, creates “enabling technology for smart glasses and other battery-constrained or power-constrained devices. We make both a chip and a software platform.” He said the company’s technology can “achieve up to 100 times lower power consumption,” which could be a major advantage for smart glasses that need to remain small and lightweight, which means using small batteries.\n\nLike many exhibitors at AWE, FemtoAI’s customers are not end-users but other companies that make products.\n\n**Reminiscent of the PC clone business**\n\nIt’s too early to know for sure, but my sense is that we’re going to see a flood of companies enter the smart-glasses market, much as we did in the 1980s and 1990s when there were hundreds of PC makers. A few of the larger players will develop their own chips, displays, and operating systems, but most are likely to follow the path of the PC clone makers, purchasing hardware and licensing software from many of the companies that exhibited at AWE 2026.\n\n*Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist. Contact him at larry@larrymagid.com.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/larry-magid-smart-glasses-come-into-focus-at-augmented-world-expo", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/18/larry-magid-smart-glasses-coming-into-focus/", "published_at": "2026-06-18 15:00:13+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-18 15:26:22.405942+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-products", "ai-tools", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Meta", "Snap", "Qualcomm", "Ray-Ban", "Evan Spiegel", "Lens Studio", "Snapdragon", "AWE"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/larry-magid-smart-glasses-come-into-focus-at-augmented-world-expo", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/larry-magid-smart-glasses-come-into-focus-at-augmented-world-expo.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/larry-magid-smart-glasses-come-into-focus-at-augmented-world-expo.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/larry-magid-smart-glasses-come-into-focus-at-augmented-world-expo.jsonld"}}