Google Glass is kinda sorta now a publicly available product – the launch came with a series of fits and starts, culminating in an open, unlimited public beta that kicked off yesterday. Its first major competitor might be gearing up for a debut to follow shortly, according to a new report from Business Korea (via Business Insider). The report says that a Samsung employee passed along the info, saying the so-called “Gear Glass” will be ready for the annual IFA electronics show in Berlin this fall.
The wearable device is an electronic headset that includes an ear place and a display, and it’s powered by Samsung’s homegrown Tizen OS, according to the report. Tizen is the OS that now powers Samsung’s Gear line of wearable wristborne devices, after the Korean company switched over from using Android on the original Galaxy Gear smartwatch released last year. For wearables, Tizen has benefits in terms of power consumption that allow them to spend less time on the charger and more time on the bod.
Gear is also said to be the trade dress of choice for Samsung’s wearables going forward, which is something the company telegraphed by naming its last four wearable devices something involving Gear. Not much else is known about Gear Glass just yet, but you can imagine it’ll be similar in terms of interface and use case scenarios to what we’ve seen from Google’s project.
Everyone and their brother seems to be developing a Glass-type device, with patents popping up for similar tech from Microsoft and even Apple, and there’s also shipping hardware coming soon from Epson and Sony. That’s a lot of interest in a market that arguably doesn’t even exist yet, but it’s hard to fault companies for trying something new, even if said projects seem almost certainly doomed to failure.
*Note, those are old Samsung glasses in the image, not the proposed device.
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