Meta offers a glimpse through its supposed iPhone killer: Orion
For years, Silicon Valley and Wall Street have questioned Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to invest tens of billions of dollars into Reality Labs. This week, Meta’s wearables division unveiled a prototype of its Orion smart glasses, a form factor the company believes one day could replace the iPhone. That idea sounds crazy… but maybe a little less crazy than it did a week ago.
Orion is a prototype headset that combines augmented reality, eye and hand tracking, generative AI, and a gesture-detecting wristband. Through micro LED projectors and silicon carbide lenses (which are quite expensive), Meta seems to have cracked a longstanding AR display challenge. The idea is that you can look through Orion — you know, like a pair of glasses — but also see application windows projected on the lenses that appear as if they’re embedded in the world around you. Ideally, you can use your hands, eyes, and voice to navigate the environment.
Though to be clear, Meta’s Orion smart glasses are chunkier than your average readers, reportedly cost $10,000 a pop, and won’t be available for sale anytime soon. We’re talking years from now. All the technology in Orion is relatively young, and all of it needs to get cheaper, better, and smaller to work its way into a pair of smart glasses you can buy at the mall. Zuckerberg says the company has already been working on Orion for 10 years, but there’s still no path to a sellable product.
