Smartphones Are So Over

Today, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, one of the most popular social-media apps for teenage users, is announcing a new computer that you wear directly on your face. The latest in its Spectacles line of smart glasses, which the company has been working on for about a decade, shows you interactive imagery through its lenses, placing plants or imaginary pets or even a golf-putting range into the real world around you.

So-called augmented reality (or AR) is nothing new, and neither is wearable tech. Meta makes a pair of smart glasses in partnership with Ray-Ban, and claims they’re so popular that the company can’t make them fast enough. Amazon sells an Alexa-infused version of the famous Carrera frames, which make you look like a mob boss with access to an AI assistant (Alexa, where’s the best place to hide a body?). Apple launched its Vision Pro headset—which includes an AR mode, along with a fully immersive virtual-reality one—last year. And who could forget Google Glass? Consumers have sometimes been cool on the face computers, if not outright hostile toward them, but tech companies just can’t seem to quit the idea. From that perspective, it makes sense that Snap’s new Spectacles are more a demonstration of intent than an actual product: They’re targeted to developers who will apply and pay $99 a month to use them.

But this is also, arguably, what makes them interesting. In an interview last week, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told me that he sees smart glasses as an opportunity to “reshape what a computer is, to make it something that actually keeps us grounded in the real world rather than behind a screen.” The company hasn’t accomplished this so far, of course, but the new Spectacles—and all those other smart glasses and AR headsets—are not being released into a void. They’re arriving at a moment when people are feeling pretty turned off by phones. People are angsty about how much time they spend looking down at small screens rather than engaging with the world around them. Parents are concerned that phones are driving a teen mental-health crisis. Smartphone sales have slowed, and even the latest iPhone isn’t doing great. Companies are trying to get people excited about technology again, by pitching all sorts of new hardware ideas that break the bounds of that rectangular screen, such as lapel pins or glorified walkie-talkies that work with AI assistants. I had this moment in mind as I wore the new Spectacles earlier this month, batting colorful digital blobs away while Paramore’s “Misery Business” played in the background.  

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Among all the new glasses options, the Spectacles are distinct. They are oriented less toward utility—say, asking Alexa to set a timer—and more toward fun. In doing so, they offer a very specific formulation for the future of computing: that it should be amusing and connective. “If we look at the history of computers, they’ve actually always kept us indoors, taken us away from people that we love,” Spiegel told me. Growing up, he explained, he loved computers, but he had to go to the computer lab to use them, which meant forgoing the opportunity to hang out with friends during recess. He thinks smart glasses are an opportunity to reinvent screens by integrating computers more naturally into one’s life.

But Spectacles are still far from perfect. For starters, they are notably heavy. When I tried the glasses, they got warm to the touch after use, despite Snap’s assurances that it had invested in a state-of-the-art cooling system. They support up to 45 minutes of continuous usage, which isn’t very long. They reminded me of snorkeling goggles. You absolutely could not wear them in daily life without someone asking you what exactly you’ve got on your head. Their lenses can be dimmed to look like sunglasses, or made clear so people can still see your eyes. The glasses are controlled by your hands, held out in front of you. You pinch your index finger and your thumb together to “click.” (The onboarding process involves practicing by popping bubbles floating a few feet from your face.)

Mostly, they’re fun. Snapchat is famously popular with young people, and the glasses feel like a piece of hardware designed for this audience—closer to a Nintendo Switch than a Google Glass. In one game developed in partnership with Lego, you can project virtual bricks onto your kitchen table and move them around to build different creations. Ask it for an additional small blue brick, and one appears before you. In collaboration with Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, Snap is also launching a game called Peridot Beyond that lets you care for virtual pets.

Perhaps most important, at least when it comes to Spiegel’s bigger vision, the Spectacles can sync together, so that multiple people can see the same digital creations at once. In one experience, called Imagine Together, users can shout words to create cartoons that then appear in little bubbles on the screen. “Imagine a fox!” you might say, and then a small fox appears, floating in a bubble in midair between you and your friend.

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Spiegel, who has four children, dreams that someday he’ll see his kids playing together in augmented reality. I asked him what he might say to parents who would be nervous about their children adding an additional level of computing into their daily life. (Parents are already plenty concerned about screen time as is, without the screens being barely an inch from their teens’ faces.) What would he say to the parents who just want their kids to go outside? Spiegel countered that he is a go-outside-and-play parent himself—but argued that the glasses could make playing together outside more fun.

At times, I found the Spectacles genuinely amusing, in a way the current Meta and Alexa glasses aren’t. And yet, they still don’t feel essential. Any device that’s hoping to disrupt the smartphone will have to be extremely good. Whether smart glasses are indeed the future of computing will depend on whether someone can make a pair that’s useful in day-to-day life. Spectacles aren’t there yet; they’re more novelty than utility. But the philosophical argument they make is a provocative one, even if it’s just that right now—an argument. Like the imaginary pet I saw while wearing them, it technically exists, but just barely.