Oppo, the Chinese phone maker, is one of the brands under the BBK Electronics umbrella along with OnePlus, Realme, Vivo and iQOO. OnePlus ships its phones within the US while the other brands don’t. Even Oppo, the fourth largest smartphone brand in the world after Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi, does not ship its handsets to the United States, although this could change.
Oppo uses a single-lens design for its Air Glass AR wearable
Unlike most AR glasses, the Air Glass is a monocle with a single ear frame and displays data coming from an Oppo phone with an average brightness of 1400 nits. That’s brighter than the typical 1000 nits (up to 1200 nits) on the iPhone 13 Pro Max. A small Spark Micro Projector the size of a coffee bean projects images onto the microLED lens.
The Oppo Air Glass with single lens was unveiled last December
The Oppo Air Glass is powered by the same Snapdragon 4100 chip used on some Wear OS smartwatches like the TicWatch Pro 3. The Snapdragon 4100+ was found in the Fossil Gen 6 from last September.
The Oppo AR Glass is a more traditionally designed dual-lens device. The device provides real-time language translation and 3D depth mapping. To use tracked air gestures with the Oppo Air Glass or the Oppo AR Glass, the user must have an Oppo handset and the Oppo Watch 2 nearby.
Oppo’s Alen Wu, head of overseas affairs, said through an interpreter at the time that the company needed to strengthen its position in Europe before moving to America. Another possibility is that Oppo is showing off its AR glasses in North America to attract more developers for the devices before the pair is released in Europe, where the company does sell phones.
Oppo’s Air Glass and AR Glass may work on non-Oppo Android phones
Another thing to consider is that Oppo uses Snapdragon Spaces, an open mixed-reality (XR) platform that allows companies to develop AR apps without the basic tools required to do so. Since the platform uses Qualcomm’s mobile hardware, Oppo’s Air Glass and AR Glass could theoretically work on non-Oppo-manufactured Android devices powered by Snapdragon chips.
Yi Xu, Director of XR Technology at Oppo, said: “Our belief that AR can be used to create a new digital world based entirely on the real world has been the driving force behind our investment and R&D in AR. technologies, including the development of fundamental technology, applications, user interfaces and ecosystems,”
Unless Barra confused the US with India, his comment — at least as far as handsets are concerned — never materialized.