We may have had an early look at a pair of prototype smart glasses, after a mystery pair were spotted in a photo beside none other than Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta. What’s more, Zuckerberg wasn’t shy about letting us know it’s a new product either, confirming on the platform we’d be hearing more about it soon.
To understand more about what we’re seeing, and why we’re only seeing it now, we’ve got to do some Marvel-style timeline exploration. It begins this week when Matthew Karolain, VP of platform development for the Boston Globe sent a public question to Zuckerberg on Threads, asking what a mystery pair of glasses were in an attached photo. The image is pixelated and blurry, as seen above, and clearly zoomed in from a larger photo, but Karolian didn’t share the source.
It turns out the image came from Zuckerberg who shared it on Threads in February 2024, showing him working at a desk. The glasses can be seen in the background. Karolian also attempted to bring Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth (aka “Boztank”) into the conversation, but there was no need as Zuckerberg provided as much information as we could expect about an unreleased product.
“Will be ready to share more later this year,” he replied, giving us all the confirmation that we need about the nature of the smart glasses. What makes them different to the Ray-Ban Meta’s is the elongated arm with a hinge some distance away from the frame, unlike the company’s current smart glasses, and just about every other pair of glasses out there, smart or otherwise.
What else do we know about these mystery glasses? Nothing firm, but we could link them to another conversation Zuckerberg had around smart glasses recently. In a conversation with YouTuber Kallaway, Zuckerberg talked extensively about the future of smart glasses, both with and without displays, and said Meta is almost ready to demonstrate the prototype of its “holographic smart glasses.” It’s possible this is the product we see in the photo shared by Karolian.
Furthermore, Meta first showed the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses during its Meta Connect event in September 2023. It will hold the 2024 Meta Connect event on September 25 and September 26, so we may not have long to wait to see if these two products are one and the same, or if Meta has a range of new or prototype smart glasses to reveal.