Sony has announced a new display module that clips onto the frame of any piece of existing eyewear in order to turn it into something more akin to Google Glass.
The new hardware features a control board with Bluetooth and WiFi; compass, accelerometer, touch sensors; and an ARM Cortex-A7 Processor. That all supplies a 640x400 OLED microdisplay that hovers in front of your eye and doubles as a screen—equivalent to a field of view supplied by a 16 inch display 2 meters in front of you.
The whole unit weighs under 2 ounces, and is apparently easy to attach and remove, so it needn't be in use all the time. In terms of applications, Sony reckons it could be used for sports, work and entertainment, so it will provide "partner organizations" with an SDK to produce whatever apps they choose.
The device will be on show at CES in January, though Sony says it will swing into mass production in 2015. So, realistically, it'll be 2016 before you could buy the thing. Pricing is anyone's guess.
All in, it's a neat little idea, and perhaps a slightly more practical approach than Google Glass for some applications—say, for the extremely sporty, who want to switch eyewear but carry their smarts with them. Still, we'll have to wait and see how well it turns out—and when it arrives, for that matter. [Sony]