Snapchat has a new name – Snap Inc – and it looks to be getting into the hardware game as well. Business Insider reported on a leaked video detailing Snapchat Spectacles, and now the device has been officially confirmed by company founder Evan Spiegel.
Starting with the leak and it showed off a guy wearing a pair of sunglasses equipped with a camera lens in the upper-left corner. When he taps on the top of the glasses, the lights around the camera lens light up and, seemingly, video recording begins.
It’s since been confirmed by Spiegel, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, that 10 seconds of video are recorded at a time, from a 115-degree angle lens, which records in a circular fashion – “more like human vision”. These videos sync with a smartphone making it easy to share them with friends, family and other followers.
The Spectacles will cost $129.99 when they go on sale later this fall with Spiegel no doubt looking to tap into the huge 150 million active daily Snapchat users.
Talking to the WSJ about a prototype he tested in early 2015, Spiegel said. “It was our first vacation, and we went to Big Sur for a day or two. We were walking through the woods, stepping over logs, looking up at the beautiful trees. And when I got the footage back and watched it, I could see my own memory, through my own eyes—it was unbelievable. It’s one thing to see images of an experience you had, but it’s another thing to have an experience of the experience. It was the closest I’d ever come to feeling like I was there again.”
Devices have done this sort of thing before however. Lifelogging cameras – Autographer was probably the highest profile – hit the scene a few years ago but were criticized for being an invasion of privacy for non-wearers who were being recorded without their consent.
It’s an issue that Google also faced with its Glass project. Like Snap Inc’s effort, Google Glass was a pair of glasses boasting a front facing camera.
Snapchat is aimed at a totally different generation though – so it will be interesting to see if on-the-fly instant video recording becomes more socially accepted.
