Samsung Is Already Working on Smart Glasses With a Built-In Screen

With a competitor to Meta’s screenless AI glasses already in the pipeline, Samsung looks like it’s now training its sights on the Meta Ray-Ban Display. According to a report from the South Korean supply chain website The Elec (machine-translated), Samsung is developing a display designed for a pair of smart glasses. While the company is reportedly exploring different types of display technology, it’s gravitating towards a color screen, unlike some other smart glasses like Even Realities’ Even G2 that use green monochrome. Though the plans don’t appear to be set in stone, there may be some notable differences between Samsung’s screen-equipped smart glasses and Meta’s. For one, Samsung is reportedly exploring the idea of making the display “binocular,” meaning it appears in front of both eyes, unlike the Meta Ray-Ban Display. For reference, the Meta Ray-Ban Display’s screen is small, measuring just 600 x 600 pixels, and is intended as more of a heads-up display for notifications and navigation. © Raymond Wong / Gizmodo Samsung also appears to be exploring a different layout. While the Meta Ray-Ban Display has a screen on the side of the right lens, Samsung’s display glasses could feature a screen directly in front of the wearer’s eyes. That idea intrigues me but also feels like a risk. Having used the Meta Ray-Ban Display a bit myself, I found the display (even if it was off to one side) to be distracting. Having one directly in your line of sight could be even more jarring. Leaks about the screen paint a picture that feels similar to the display glasses that Meta makes. While full color, the screen doesn’t appear to be high-resolution like the kind you’d find in AR video glasses made by Xreal or RayNeo, according to The Elec. Instead, it could be more oriented toward notifications and other quick information. The Meta Ray-Ban Display, for example, show text messages, emails, navigation, and a viewfinder for taking pictures or videos—all areas that make obvious sense for Samsung. If there’s one advantage that Samsung will have, it’s deep integration with Samsung hardware, particularly its phones and watches. So, even if a pair of Samsung smart glasses with a screen winds up being similar to the Meta Ray-Ban Display, software would make a world of difference.