By Liyo Kikon
I love gadgets, all gadgets, and when companies try to come up with funky stuff, I love it more! This is one of those gadgets which you probably won’t see often but it sure is a cool idea, especially for all you snapchat lovers!
Snapchat is a very popular multimedia messaging application It involves a mixture of both public and private content sharing and is popularly known as the application which manipulates your face by adding stuff to it, resulting in funny or adorable pictures and videos. It uses live facial tracking system, allowing the users to change their faces or swap it with another person and really have fun with the application. With more than 100 million monthly active users, the company is doing very well and this time they have taken a leap forward to create their first hardware product.
The Snapchat Spectacles is a pair of sunglasses with two visible circles on each corner of the glasses. One of these “circle” has a camera and the other one has an LED display. It has a button on the left side of the frame for interacting with it. The idea here is to allow people to record short clips from their point of view and share them on Snapchat. It is a simple concept and although this is not the first pair of glasses with camera inbuilt, the Snapchat Spectacles comes with really good built quality and looks better than any of the glasses out there. To make a point that these are not “Spy glasses”, the second circle with LED display will light up in a very visible and obvious way, insuring that the people around you know about the glasses and the fact that you are taking video.
The interface is simple, you can start recording short video clips simply by tapping the button on the left frame of the glasses and the indicator will light up, notifying you and the people around you that the recording has started. It connects to your phone via bluetooth or wifi and as soon as your recording is done, it will automatically transfer the video to your phone. When the transferring is done, it won’t upload to Snapchat automatically and this was an intentional decision the company made when they developed this product. It will allow you to review the video you just took and you will be able to choose which video you wish to share. Although this means that there is an extra step required to share videos, I think they wanted to make sure that no one accidentally shared any embarrassing videos by mistake.
The battery on these Spectacles will easily last an entire day on mild use, but as long as you have the carrying case, you need not worry about the battery running out. Yes, the carrying case has inbuilt battery which can charge your Spectacles on the go. It is very simple to charge and there is no need for any wires, you simply fold up the spectacles and place them in the carrying case and a pair of magnets will snap the glasses in alignment with the charger, much like the old Macbook Megsafe chargers. The carrying case can be charged through USB and there is a light indicator on the side of the case to know how much battery it has got. Although it is a bit bulky to carry around in your pocket, the charger can easily fit in a backpack and with the ability to charge the Spectacles up to four times, it is something you will definitely need if you are an active uploader and you go out for an entire day.
The spectacles will soon be available in many different colors and is compatible with both android and iOS devices. You will obviously need the Snapchat application to share the videos you take with these.
