Wearables
Latest Andru Edwards Videos
Meta’s Screenless Ray-Bans Now Do Turn-by-Turn Walking Directions
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Artificial Intelligence,
You know the corner. Unfamiliar city, phone in your hand, thumb hovering over a map, and you still walk half a block the wrong way before the blue arrow catches up with you. Meta's smart glasses have been sitting on your face this whole time doing nothing about it. Firmware v128 changes that, and it does it on the pair without a screen.
The update adds turn-by-turn walking directions you launch with your voice. Say "Hey Meta, navigate to Times Square" and the turns come through the open-ear speakers. Until now you couldn't start navigation from the glasses at all. You started a route in a third-party app on your phone and let the audio ride over Bluetooth, or you asked Siri or Google Assistant to do it for you. Both work. Neither keeps the phone in your pocket, which is most of the reason to wear the things.
Click to continue reading Meta’s Screenless Ray-Bans Now Do Turn-by-Turn Walking Directions
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Meta Closes the Ray-Ban Glasses Trick for Hiding the Recording Light
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Cameras, Wearables, Editorial,
The white light on the front of a pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses is the only thing standing between you and a stranger filming you. That's the whole design. There's no shutter sound, no lens barrel, no obvious gesture. A small LED comes on, and you're supposed to notice it and act accordingly.
Meta has started rolling out an update that closes the newest way people were getting around it. Until now, the glasses only checked the LED at the moment you pressed record. Start a video with the light exposed, then slide a finger or a piece of tape over it, and the camera kept going. Alex Himel, Meta's VP of wearables, announced the fix on Threads: "The camera will now stop working if the light is covered during a recording."
Click to continue reading Meta Closes the Ray-Ban Glasses Trick for Hiding the Recording Light
Legato Just Hid an AI Hearing Aid Inside a Normal Pair of Glasses
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Artificial Intelligence,
In a loud restaurant, somebody across the table says something, you catch about 60% of it, and you nod anyway. For a lot of the 50 million American adults with hearing loss, that's every conversation, and the fix is a device you have to admit you need. A startup called Legato is going after that problem by not making a medical device at all.
Legato came out of stealth Wednesday with $12 million in funding and its first product, Legato Frames. It's a pair of glasses with hearing assistance built into the arms. From across the room, they look like glasses.
Click to continue reading Legato Just Hid an AI Hearing Aid Inside a Normal Pair of Glasses
Garmin’s Fenix 9 Pro Gets a Titanium Case and a Satellite Lifeline
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, GPS,
The Fenix 9 starts at $999.99. The Fenix 9 Pro starts at $1,099.99. Both are available now.
Click to continue reading Garmin’s Fenix 9 Pro Gets a Titanium Case and a Satellite Lifeline
The Ceramic Apple Watch Might Be Coming Back
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Wearables, Rumors,
Every year around this time, the Apple rumor mill produces one story that fans want to be true so badly that it spreads faster than its sourcing deserves. This year it is the ceramic Apple Watch.
The claim: Apple will bring back a ceramic case with the Apple Watch Series 12, expected at next month's September event. It would be the first ceramic Watch since the Series 5 Edition in 2019. It is a genuinely appealing idea. It is also, at the moment, one post on X.
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Fitbit Data Can Finally Write to Apple Health, Twelve Years Late
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Wearables, Google,
If you wear a Fitbit and carry an iPhone, you've spent the last twelve years running a small, annoying errand. Your steps and sleep lived in one app. Everything else your phone tracked lived in Apple Health. Getting them into the same place meant paying for a third-party bridge and hoping it didn't break. That errand is finally over.
Google Health version 5.05 landed on iOS this week, and buried in the release notes is the thing people have been asking for since 2014: you can now share your exercise records, sleep, vitals, steps, and more from Google Health into Apple Health. It works for Fitbit trackers and the Pixel Watch, since Google Health replaced the old Fitbit app back in May.
Click to continue reading Fitbit Data Can Finally Write to Apple Health, Twelve Years Late
The Friend AI Necklace That Texted You Now Talks Back, and Costs $150 More
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Artificial Intelligence,
Friend is back. The new version, which Schiffmann announced on X as friend 2.0, adds a built-in speaker, so the thing around your neck can now hold up its end of a conversation with what the company describes as a consistent personality. The new price is $249, up from $99 at launch.
Click to continue reading The Friend AI Necklace That Texted You Now Talks Back, and Costs $150 More
Samsung’s Galaxy Glasses Skip the Screen and Bet Everything on Gemini
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Google, Artificial Intelligence,
The whole fantasy of smart glasses has always been the same one: a computer on your face that nobody else notices you are wearing. Samsung's new Galaxy Glasses, shown off at Unpacked, take that idea about as far as it will go. They leave out the one thing you might assume a pair of smart glasses needs, which is a screen you can see through.
Instead of putting anything in your field of view, the Galaxy Glasses lean entirely on cameras, audio, and Google's Gemini assistant. This is the first pair built on Android XR, the platform Samsung and Google have been teasing for what feels like ages, and it is aimed squarely at the Ray-Ban Meta crowd rather than anyone still waiting on Iron Man overlays. You look at something, you talk to it, and it talks back.
Click to continue reading Samsung’s Galaxy Glasses Skip the Screen and Bet Everything on Gemini
Apple’s visionOS 27 Update is Actually Insane (Video)
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Wearables, Software, Videos,
You can probably recite the joke by now: Vision Pro is a very expensive iPad strapped to your face. I've heard it for two years. However, after going hands-on with the visionOS 27 developer beta, I think that joke is finally running out of road.
Start with Siri, because Apple basically started over. On visionOS 27, the assistant lives in your room as a small 3D orb you can park anywhere - next to your monitor, above the couch, wherever - and it stays anchored there. There's no wake word anymore, either. A new interaction called Look and Speak means you just glance at the orb and start talking. That sounds small. In practice, it removes the most awkward thing about talking to a headset.
Click to continue reading Apple’s visionOS 27 Update is Actually Insane (Video)
The XREAL One Pro are the BEST AR Glasses I’ve Ever Used! (Video)
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Wearables, Product Reviews, Videos,
The XREAL One Pro are not the kind of AR glasses most people picture when they hear the term. There are no sci-fi holograms floating over the real world, and no bulky headset experience.
After using them for months, I think of them much more simply: a massive private display you can take anywhere. In this video, I break down how I’ve been using the XREAL One Pro as a portable screen for work, travel, gaming, and watching movies. That includes plugging them into a laptop as a virtual ultra-wide monitor, using them with the ROG Xbox Ally X for handheld gaming, turning cramped airplane seats into a private cinema or work setup, and replacing questionable hotel TVs with a much better virtual screen.
The big difference here is the X1 Spatial Computing chip, which helps keep the display stable with ultra-low latency, plus electrochromic dimming, a wide field of view, and 120Hz refresh support.
Get the XREAL One Pro on Amazon - or the cheaper XREAL 1S!