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Snapchat launches Spectacles V2
- iDemonix 8y agoI'm surprised to see them have another go at this after the first go flopped. I always thought one of the main issues, which apparently they've addressed but it doesn't seem so, is that they're aimed at an age range that highly prioritises fashion and style - and yet they release a v2 that's almost as ugly as the first, and that my grandma wouldn't be seen dead in.
- spyspy 8y agoI'd actually applaud them for buckling down and improving on what I believe is still a good idea. I actually wish you could set them to instantly go to your story rather than having to transfer the photos to your phone and do it manually later.
- wonder_bread 8y ago>"I actually wish you could set them to instantly go to your story rather than having to transfer the photos to your phone and do it manually later." Is there any word on why this is? These would be a lot better if I could just click the button on the glasses and have it post to my story automatically (I understand this means the user wouldn't be able to add any overlay effects but I feel like the vantage point of the video is the main attraction to posting it in the first place). With this friction it makes the process a bit less sexy.
- spyspy 8y agoProbably having a constant connection drains the battery much faster.
- jfaat 8y agoWould you need a constant connection? Auto-uploading to the phone if it’s in range after each recording would drain the battery faster but with their advertised ~2 day battery (one week of use on 4 case charges) it doesn’t seem impossible, it seems like a trade-off they decided not to make.
- throwaway675309 8y agoWhen the first pair was announced, I was hoping that it was targeting the life-logging market... right up until I saw them - arbitrarily restricted video lengths, and Gene-Wilder level of ostentatious to the point that even Salvador Dali would balk. So the second pair I had more hope for, but they've still fundamentally got the same odd design along with a huge hypnosis looking pinwheel when you are taking video. Awful.
- 0x4f3759df 8y agoYeah the first edition was terrible (I used mine for about 10 minutes) and this doesn't look any better. I would love some nice life-logging glasses for filming my nephews, the occasional bike ride or sunset. The market is filled with very low resolution cheap units, with no actual good options from what I can tell... actually just googled it, these are both interesting: https://www.vuzix.com/Products/Blade-Enterprise https://www.vuzix.com/Products/Blade-Enterprise https://orbiprime.com/ https://orbiprime.com/
- bonestamp2 8y agoThis was my initial reaction too. But if they figure this out while nobody is expecting it, they'll have a huge first mover advantage that facebook/instagram can't replicate as quickly as software.
- dwighttk 8y agoI understand that I don't even get Snapchat, so I'm not the target for this, but wow, that is not even sort of interesting. You have to disconnect your phone from WiFi to connect to the glasses' WiFi to transfer data? I'm not interested in trying to get those glasses connected to WiFi, but I'm also not sure this is a better option.
- matte_black 8y agoHave you never used a WiFi memory card for DSLR cameras? It works exactly the same way and it’s pretty good.
- octalmage 8y agoI would expect them to post to Snapchat as you take photos.
- matte_black 8y agoWhy the lock-in?
- bufferoverflow 8y agoOver what interface though? Bluetooth is too slow, even v5. NFC is even slower. Wifi is the only one that makes sense.
- dwighttk 8y agohuh... I never got around to buying one but always thought it would be interesting to try... I'm probably imagining it being more of a bother than I guess it actually is.
- cift 8y ago> You have to disconnect your phone from WiFi to connect to the glasses' WiFi to transfer data? I'm guessing that since most people will be using these outdoors, losing WiFi won't be that big of a deal
- CameronBanga 8y agoCan people actually buy these? My brother is the biggest user of SnapChat I know (dozens of posts a day?) and wanted a pair, but had to wait for me to travel to NYC to buy some for him at their temporary store. It was either that, or follow some web page in hopes that a random track showed up somewhere within driving distance.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 0xCMP 8y agoYou can buy it from the app or their website.
- wlesieutre 8y agoThe old ones have been listed on Amazon since at least June though this doesn't say whether they were in stock https://camelcamelcamel.com/Snapchat-Inc-Spectacles-1-0-Sunglasses/product/B01N9ECA5B https://camelcamelcamel.com/Snapchat-Inc-Spectacles-1-0-Sung... Their initial release was admittedly sad. Made them extremely difficult to buy and then it turned out they lost $40,000,000 on unsold inventory.
- blairbeckwith 8y ago> The $150 V2s are $20 more than the old version and only available on Snap’s app and site — no Amazon, pop-up stores or vending SnapBots. And V1 owners will get a firmware update that lets them take photos. First 20% of the article.
- lavezzi 8y agoThey were always listed on Spectacles.com
- otp124 8y agoNot really stylish, as the article wants you to believe. But under-water capable is pretty cool. Either way, I've never used Snapchat so I'm not the target audience.
- madeel 8y agoHow about spending the same amount of money to build cheap usable glasses for blind people. No we are too ego washed to try anything that benefits humanity. As long as the geeks shout innovation on cheap money we'll bank on the idiocracy of the masses.
- seattle_spring 8y agoWhy in the hell would it be Snapchat's responsibility to build vision tools for blind people?
- madeel 8y agothat's like saying why is it U.S responsibility to export Democracy by funding terrorism
- seattle_spring 8y agoIt's not really at all. You're comparing a private company to one of (if not the) most powerful nation in the world?
- adamnemecek 8y agoThey haven’t learned anything.
- mkirklions 8y agoEh, a billion dollar company has a marketing department that said they should go for a second try of this. They probably studied it, asked customers to try it, etc... Lets see what a billion dollar company comes up with. If nothing else, it pushes innovation a little forward.
- adamnemecek 8y agoI'm guessing that this isnt the case. I'm guessing that it's yet again another instance of Evan Spiegel believing he knows what customers want the best despite evidence indicating otherwise.
- igetspam 8y agoGlassholes v3? I can't help but feel there's something deeply wrong with a world that voluntarily signs up for and actively participates in creating a surveillance state. After all the stories, we still haven't learned anything. Whatever happened to Privacy Visor? As stupid as I'd look walking around with those crazy glasses, it seems like it's becoming the sane way to live.
- johnrob 8y agoThe underwater capability could be huge. Given the timing here (mid spring in northern hemisphere), I suspect Snapchat is fully aware of this killer feature. Influencers could have fun with it while enticing the masses to buy a pair.
- oflannabhra 8y agoWith kids, I have often wished to be able to capture a short moment, after it occurred. I hate having my phone out and recording my 2 year old daughter, because it changes her behavior (and I think trains her to be a bit narcissistic). I'd gladly pay more than $150 for that ability, but I just don't think Spectacles are it. Someone, sometime, will crack that nut, though, and I'll gladly throw them my money. Google seems to be trying to do it with Clips [0]. [0] - https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17055618/google-clips-smart-camera-review https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17055618/google-clips-sma...
- tjwds 8y agoHave you checked out Google Clips? I've heard good things about it, though I haven't tried it out myself: https://store.google.com/us/product/google_clips?hl=en-US https://store.google.com/us/product/google_clips?hl=en-US
- oflannabhra 8y agoYeah, most reviews I’ve seen are underwhelming, including the one I linked.
- blhack 8y agoWhat the hell is that clip of the guy slapping the ball out of the kid's hands all about?!
- throwbacktictac 8y agoIf I had to guess I'd say, young dad plays with toddler while mom watches.
- ggg9990 8y agoI’ve already cracked this with Nest cameras around our house. When something cute happens I tell my Google Home to take a note with the time so I can go take a clip later. Very poor showing from Google that this isn’t already integrated — would love to say “Hey google save a clip of the last 3 minutes from the bedroom camera”
- bflesch 8y agoTo me, the circular video format is an amazing new feature. Now no longer you need to worry about how you hold your phone, and your friends can view it in any fashion they'd like to. I wonder if they built a proprietary video codec for this or whether they were able to adapt an existing one to circular content. Also, people are used to spending hundreds of dollars on nice sunglasses, it is clever to go after that spending. $150 for sunglasses merged with a gopro is amazing. I'm not a big snapchat user but I respect them very much for shipping this product.
- pjc50 8y agoMost codecs will compress a round vignette of a square video extremely well.
- untog 8y agoIt's just a normal video, warped. Someone already made an iOS module that'll replicate what the app does: https://github.com/gizmosachin/Monocle https://github.com/gizmosachin/Monocle
- bflesch 8y agoThank you for the pointer. It was very interesting to go through the repo.
- nakedrobot2 8y agoit's not warped. a camera lens is round, it makes a circular image. here that circle is smaller than the sensor. all they're doing is wasting 1/2 the sensor's pixels :)
- adrianmonk 8y agoIf they can get a square (rather than rectangular) sensor, and if my math is right, it's a lot less than half.. A circle has an area of pir^2. And it fits just inside a square whose sides are length 2r, and whose area is thus (2r)^2 or 4r^2. Therefore, the circle fills pi/4 of the square. So only 21.5% of the pixels are wasted. It gets worse if they use a rectangular sensor, though. With a 4:3 rectangular sensor, it's 41.1% wasted. For 3:2, it's 47.6%. And for 16:9, it's 55.8% wasted.
- dasanman 8y agoApril fools? lol
- username223 8y agoWhy does Techcrunch publish marketing spam (money), and why did you post it here (money?)?
- solarkraft 8y agodoubt; i consider this noteworthy for the tech industry.
- username223 8y agoThat says very little for the tech industry. This is the low-effort ad copy pasted on top of an obnoxious photo of a model biting her tongue and pretending to smile: > Photos, not just video. No yellow ring alerting people to the camera. Underwater-capable. Classier colors with lighter lenses. Prescription options. Faster syncing. And a much slimmer frame and charging case. Techcrunch should have sold out for a bit more.
- prophesi 8y agoIs there a Spectacles alternative that has a developer SDK? Preferably with a sleek design that doesn't scream "I am wearing a computer on my face."
- o_____________o 8y agoI like the idea of these, but Snapchat is unusable now – and I'm saying this as a fan of their esoteric UI. Their app has become stupefyingly bad, primarily from forcing a ton of random celebrities and tabloid content into the stream of people you intended to follow. It also grinds my modern Android to a halt pretty frequently.
- erk__ 8y agoThey have added a tab with subscribed content where all the tabloid content not is (except if you subscribe to it)
- o_____________o 8y agoThere are people that I follow in the publisher/subscriber sense that aren't Friends so aren't in the mercifully clean section. Instead, I would have to wade through the random ordering in the tabloid section to find them. It's too bad they didn't take content curation a little more seriously (or personalized, at least). The in-app content seemed almost revolutionary in the beginning, especially those from more serious publishers that explored one topic over multiple high-design pages. It turned into AOL before it had time to mature.
- dingo_bat 8y agoArticle does a terrible job of explaining the differences between this and v1. I got: - yellow ring is gone - you can click photos - exports are always HD If this is the entire list then I dunno how snap plans to sell them any better than v1.
- nakedrobot2 8y agoAgreed. Maybe they didn't manufacture 10 million of them yet, at least?
- baby 8y ago- waterproof - different colors
- lavezzi 8y ago- Slimmer case - Faster video transfers - waterproof - slimmer frames with nicer colours - prescription options Also the article lists most of the features in the first paragraph, so I hardly consider that a legitimate criticism of the content.
- pm90 8y agoProbably an Off Topic comment, but I still can't see the appeal in sharing so much of your life through social media. What is the point, exactly? To show how cool/amazing life you have? Is that need really so strong that you will: 1. But a $150 product and 2. Wear it even if you don't want to? As someone else has pointed out, although they are certainly more stylish that Google Glass and Spectacles v1, their design is still pretty ugly (IMO). I think if they really wanted to crack into the celebrities/fashion market, they should have worked with an actual high-end fashion designer to get nicer designs.
- petercooper 8y agoActually purchasable online AND in the UK this time, so I've bought some. First Spectacles weren't available here at all.
- prdonahue 8y agoPeople still use Snapchat? Granted I'm a bit old for their target demographic but it's a ghost town as far as I can see (when I open it once a month). Seems like everyone has migrated to Instagram Stories.
- leadingthenet 8y agoMy exact same experience, even though (I think) I'm still in their target demographic.
- davisonio 8y agoAbsolutely not true for my demographic (18 UK). Everybody is using Snapchat stories still because it's more "personal". Instagram Stories are used mostly by brands.
- hesdeadjim 8y agoMake them look like a pair of Raybans instead of the current bubbly design and they’ve sold me.
- some_random 8y agoI can understand why this might be of interest to some people, but V2 is still a long way from something I think most people will want. 10 seconds of video, up to 30 if you keep poking the thing? Some commenters are acting like it's a gopro, it's not even close. How frequently are you doing something you want to record that exceeds 30 seconds? Not to mention the round output, not a bad thing for a casual social media post, but what if you want literally anything other than that? Oh, and of course your $150 purchase will only work through a proprietary app that adds another step to getting your pictures and media out. Hard pass.
- chrischen 8y agoProprietary app to you, but main chat app to others.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- guiomie 8y agoBought the V1s, used them for only 1 trip, then I stopped using them because what I care is sharing with people on facebook not on snapchat. I've got a water oriented trip coming up, and am tempted to buy them, but then, everything is trapped in snapchat, so whats the point?
- chrischen 8y agoYou can export video clips.
- spycamv2 8y agoSpectacles V2, or as some may call it, Snapchat's 2nd attempt at mass commercializing body-worn spycams. It's a dual-use tech. The consumers will be the ones fronting the cost for and implementing further mass surveillance and state infiltration into our private and personal life.
- stronglikedan 8y agoIn the first demo POV video of the article, the girl has to push them back up on her face after a simple spin. I would think they would need to stay up on their own to maintain a proper POV perspective. I'm surprised they didn't re-shoot that. Is that a selling point?
- drb91 8y agoAny chance it saves to anything other than snapchat?