Xiaomi Announces Its First-Ever Smart Glasses Challenging Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories

Xiaomi on Tuesday announced that it will soon release its first-ever smart glasses, an innovation set to challenge Facebook’s recently-launched wearable technology Ray-Ban Stories.

The Beijing-based company made the official announcement through a blog post published on its website Tuesday. The technology will compete with Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories that enables its wearers to take photos with a single tap on the side of the glasses.

Xiaomi clarified that its smart glasses will come with a lot of features making them independently capable of a lot of things.

"Xiaomi Smart Glasses is capable of combining imaging systems and sensors into a subtle, ordinary glasses design through MicroLED optical waveguide technology," said the blog post.

Xiaomi’s Smart Glasses can display messages and notifications right in front of the wearer’s eyes. The wearer can select the most important notification to display such as messages and reminders, TechCrunch reported.

When taking a call using the smart glasses, the caller number will be displayed on its screens. It has a built-in microphone and speakers for making and picking up calls.

The smart glasses by Xiaomi can even detect languages. It features Xiaomi’s proprietary translating algorithm that translates the language it picks up in real-time. The technology can translate Mandarin to English, The Week reported.

Besides its capability to project an image to the size of a small billboard, Xiaomi’s wearable technology also provides navigation access. Through the Heads-Up Display navigation, it shows the wearer maps and directions on its lens.

Xiaomi’s Smart Glasses is w51 grams and is slightly heavier than Facebook’s Ray-Ban Stories. Its 5-megapixel camera has an indicator light that shows when it is on. The device’s display chip is about the size of a grain of rice at 2.4x2.01mm.

Xiaomi’s latest technology will be powered by a quad-core ARM processor and will run on Android OS. It uses MicroLed instead of OLED with its proven longer lifespan and better brightness.

The company added that the technology uses a monochrome display solution “to allow sufficient light to pass through complicated optical structures.” This means that pictures will not appear in a colored view.

On Sept. 9, Facebook partnered with Ray-Ban to launch the Ray-Ban Stories, the social media giant’s first-generation smart glasses. The social media giant’s smart glasses were sold at a starting price of $299.

So far, Xiaomi has not mentioned anything regarding the price and the launch date of its new offering.