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Photos showcasing Google’s upcoming second-generation Glass Enterprise Edition are now appearing online, allegedly pulled from Brazil’s national telecommunications agency Anatel.
The design of the new AR wearable appears to be very similar to the previous iteration of Google’s eye-borne gadget, with the prism-style display meant to be placed over the right-hand eye and a camera at the front. A physical button is still in place just behind that for activating the camera in either photo or video mode.
Included documentation indicates that users will be able to control what’s being displayed on the new Google Glass HUD using a touchpad on the side of the device itself. For instance, users will be able to swipe in any direction to move between paged information, with taps used to select things and a double-tap to interact with the system itself.
A speaker is included on the interior edge and on the back of the new enterprise-specific wearable, Google has included a new USB Type-C port and LED indicator for charging. The hinge on the new gadget reportedly serves two purposes. It can be folded up to deactivate the device and save battery when not in use or, as with the previous generation, linked up to safety glasses or other eyewear.
This isn’t the first appearance of Google Glass EE Gen 2
Google Glass Enterprise Edition 2 first cropped up at the FCC back in November before appearing under certification at South Korea’s National Radio Research Agency (NRRA). Specifications and other details have leaked out through those documents and at least one benchmark too.
The key difference with the most recent leak is that most previous images of the device that have appeared have been in the form of renders or sketches.
The most recent information on the newest version of Google’s AR wearable seems to suggest that Google is mostly focusing on internal upgrades. For instance, the device is expected to appear with an octa-core 64-bit Snapdragon 710 SoC rather than the Intel Atom processor used in the first generation. That’s a 10nm chipset clocked at 1.21GHz in benchmarks run on the new generation Google Glass and backed by 3GB RAM. A 3.08Wh 800mAh battery sits behind those components.
The gadget is also running a customized variant of Android 8.1 Oreo in the latest tests and pushes connectivity forward substantially with Bluetooth 5.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac support.
Presumably, the camera included on the newest iteration will be better than the 5-megapixel snapper included on the first-generation of Google Glass too but that hasn’t been confirmed just yet.
You probably won’t ever get the chance to use this particular product
As with the previous generation and as implied by the information that’s been attained so far, if not by the GG2-designation in the latest images, most consumers will probably never get the opportunity to try out this new product.
That’s because Google has chiefly focused on the enterprise market, following the dismal launch of its consumer-ready Google Glass Explorer Edition several years back. Although the AR-heavy product thrives as a way to augment workers in the industrial and business environments, it ultimately failed to garner the approval of the general populace. So consumers shouldn’t expect to see this device appearing on retail shelves.
