The privacy concerns are still very much a problem of the SnapChat Spectacles. Snap-watchers! – have read before, including the company’s creation story, Spiegel’s personal history and Snapchat’s wide appeal.
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And Saturday morning, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel confirmed the rumors officially announcing the release of the company’s new baby, as well as company’s change of name into Snap Inc.
Spiegel is downplaying expectations for his first hardware product, by describing Spectacles as a “toy”, and telling the Journal they will have limited distribution at first.
So what do we know about Spectacles thus far? “Now that we are developing other products, like Spectacles, we need a name that goes beyond just one product – but doesn’t lose the familiarity and fun of our team and brand”. The video taking sunglasses will record up to 10 seconds of footage for sharing. These are sunglasses with an integrated video camera offering a 115-degree field of view.
According to the Journal, the camera on Spectacles uses a much wider lens than a normal cellphone camera, and records more “circular” video, meant to be “closer to human vision”. The video is captured in a circular format but, as demonstrated in the promotional video, it can be view in both landscape and portrait on phones.
The move could be seen as a response to the recent decision by the rival app Instagram to launch Stories – short videos akin to those that can be posted on Snapchat. Since their only goal is to capture short videos, Snap’s Spectacles will only cost about $130.
“It’s about us figuring out if it fits into people’s lives and seeing how they like it”, he said.
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Spectacles will also come with a case which can be used for charging them. It also shoots circular video instead of the square footage we’re accustomed to seeing – Snap’s Evan Spiegel tells the Journal the circular look will feel more like human vision.
