The glasses – available this fall – have a small camera with a circle of tiny lights that allow the user to record up to 10 seconds of video with each tap of a button near the hinge, according to the Wall Street Journal. Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat (now renamed Snap Inc), says that the glasses free you from having to hold your phone up “like a wall in front of your face'”. That’s significantly cheaper than the $1,500 price point for Google Glass, the search giant’s wearable experiment that it has stopped producing. We only have two official photos and a brief, leaked promo video to go on-and no further technical details from the report-so we’ll have to wait to learn how much on-board memory is filling either of those bulges, what resolution the video will be captured in, and whether the glasses’ processing unit communicates with a nearby smartphone to upload those video captures to Snapchat.
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Snapchat plans to release a wearable gadget called Spectacles, which resembles a pair of sunglasses with a built-in camera for shooting video.
Business Insider found the leaked promotional video on YouTube after being anonymously tipped off, managing to capture the footage before it was removed from the site.
Meet Snap, Inc., a Venice, Calif. -based startup that’s behind the popular ephemeral messaging app Snapchat.
The video captures the view from the wearer’s eyes.
A Snap spokeswoman not respond to a request for comment.
That Snapchat is making glasses isn’t surprising. The video recorded is circular, similar to human vision.
Snapchat is getting its first hardware product – and a new name. The social-media firm has never produced physical gear, unless you count merchandise like beach towels and backpacks.
In addition, Spiegel has been spotted in public wearing prototypes specs.
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This story originally published at 5:45 p.m. PT. Snapchat Chief Executive Evan Spiegel told the publication that Spectacles are a toy, meant to be worn for fun at events like family barbecues or while on a hike.
