Alright, so here’s what’s up. Snap—you know, the Snapchat folks—are cooking up something new. It’s their next-gen Spectacles AR glasses. Specs for short. They’re saying it’ll drop sometime next year. Finally, right?
Anyway, so they kinda, sorta already sneaked these Specs (Spectacles ’24 if you wanna be formal) to developers way back in late 2024. Then, they thought, “Hey, let’s loop in the students and teachers,” because, why not? January 2025, educational discount—bam, there you go.
Oh, and today at the AWE 2025 – which apparently is a big deal? – Snap’s co-founder, Evan Spiegel (yep, that guy), said they got this new version coming that’s like, lighter, smaller, with a beefy upgrade in abilities. But, here’s the thing, they’re playing coy with pricing and we still don’t get to see what these bad boys look like. Yet.
Right, they’ve got this crazy library—four million Lenses or something—which spruce up reality with all these 3D whozits and whatzits. Pretty neat they’ll work on the new Specs too. Spiegel must be smirking somewhere.
Now, let’s pause because the spec list they dropped in 2024 was nuts. Like, 46° field of view through these fancy stereo waveguide displays. They’re packing dual Snapdragon processors, spatial audio, and have a complete setup with high-res color cameras. But I really wish they’d fix that miserable 45-minute battery life. I mean, seriously.
And in another plot twist—yeah, there’s more—they’ll launch Snap OS updates. Integrations with OpenAI and Google Cloud’s Gemini are on the menu. This means developers can whip up snazzy AI Lenses—think real-time translation or interactive adventures. Like, those could be fun… right?
Also, new APIs are coming in hot. There’s one for anchoring AR things in 3D and another for speech recognition in over 40 languages. Oh, and Snap3D—this engine that spits out real-time 3D objects. Who needs reality?
For the hardcore devs out there doing location stuff, Snap’s rolling out things like a Fleet Management app for those sweet Lens launches. Also, integration with Niantic Spatial VPS and WebXR browser support. Whatever that is—sounds sci-fi, doesn’t it?
Could Snap beat Apple, Meta, and Google to the punch in the AR game? Maybe. Who knows, but I’d keep my eyes peeled. Seems like tech giants think AR glasses are next-gen smartphones or something. We’ll see if that’s true.
