I was recently asked for my thoughts on Meta’s Orion AR glasses, specifically whether such glasses have a chance of becoming as big as (or replacing) smartphones in the future.
I was recently asked for my opinion on one Thread of life article about Meta’s Orion AR glasses and the future they may or may not point to. Only a small snippet of my overall response was used, and in a way that supported the article’s (fairly) skeptical view of the future of AR glasses. But given my position that I do indeed think AR glasses are the inevitable future of the smartphone – and will become the cornerstone of our daily digital lives – I think it’s worth sharing my full response publicly.
Q: Everyone owning smartphones is a one-off disruption to the market because they are subsidized and replacing cell phones, which everyone else had. Do you think most people will actually buy AR glasses?
Ben: I truly believe, as do the largest tech companies in the world (Meta, Apple, Google, etc.) that AR glasses are the inevitable long-term evolution of the smartphone. The “easy sell” (if all the other parts can be worked out) is to imagine doing everything you can do on your phone today, except on a magical screen that floats in front of you and can be scaled to any desired format at any time. So as you walk down the street it could be a little window showing you a message, but when you get home it could become a 100 foot cinema screen on the wall.
If you can build a device that can do this (and there’s reason to believe it can’t), then you haven’t just replaced your smartphone… Also replace your television. Think about all the other screens in your life besides your phone and TV: your laptop screen, your desktop monitor, your smartwatch… these can all be replaced by virtual screens that come from a single device that you always carry with you. You can’t fit a 65″ 4K TV in your pocket… but if you have glasses that can mimic that screen, you can literally take it anywhere.
If you’ve had the chance to use Apple Vision Pro, you can clearly see that this idea is more than just a dream. The virtual screens created by Vision Pro are of incredibly high quality. For most people, a virtual TV window in Vision Pro will be higher quality than any TV they’re likely to own (not to mention it also works better than any existing 3DTV or 3D cinema , because using one screen for each eye creates a much better view). better 3D picture than the glasses you wear for a 3DTV or movie).
That’s all true, but Vision Pro is still huge! The tech industry’s current challenge is figuring out how to pack the features, specs and quality of Vision Pro into a pair of glasses as big as Orion. It’s one enormous technical challenge that will require multiple breakthroughs.
Again, this is the long term vision – at least 10 years ahead. Orion represents a real step towards making this a reality, but it’s still very limited compared to the experience you get from a bulky headset like Vision Pro. Orion himself does not good enough to be the smartphone replacement, but the future direction is clear.
So for those reasons, I think people will buy AR glasses, but only if they offer a better price than their smartphones. And that will take at least another ten years.
Q: You can’t type, the battery will never be as good as a bigger phone and you have to wear glasses. Are [AR glasses] a dead end? Why or why not?
Ben: Typing in XR hasn’t been completely cracked yet, but there’s no reason to think it never will be. This would be akin to thinking that a software keyboard on a smartphone could never be as good as a physical keyboard like on a Blackberry… but that couldn’t have been more thoroughly refuted.
There are many research opportunities to make typing more enjoyable on these types of devices; I would suggest taking a look at the EMG input device Meta has been working on.
There’s no reason to think that battery life could never match that of a phone. Meta is already working on this challenge with Orion, which uses a wireless ‘compute puck’ (with a large battery and processor) that transfers the heaviest workload from the glasses to this much larger device. That means the glasses can have fairly low power consumption, while most of the computing work is done on the compute puck before it is streamed to be displayed on the glasses. Because this compute puck doesn’t have to be constantly out of your pocket like a smartphone (and doesn’t need a screen, cameras, etc.), it can even have a larger battery than the average smartphone.
Q: Why are Zuckerberg and Meta so desperate for something to replace Android and iOS phones?
Ben: Meta has always been dependent on Google and Apple, because those companies control the platforms Meta relies on to reach its audience. Meta has to follow their rules.
Meta’s entire journey into immersive technology (which started in 2014 with its acquisition of VR startup Oculus) was driven entirely by Zuckerberg wanting to beat Google and Apple to the “next computing platform” so he wouldn’t be stuck under their thumb . I summarized this situation earlier this year in an article summarizing more than a decade of Zuckerberg’s attempts to outsmart Apple and Google in immersive technology.
