Google has revealed a new preview video for Project Glass. It includes some compelling use cases and a closer look at what appears to be the UI approach (very similar to the Holo Android design language).
What’s missing, as always in videos like this, is how this will work for your average user. I have a smartphone (iPhone 5) and an unlimited data connection provided by Three UK, but I can’t realistically use it for what I want to when I really need to.
Two use cases in particular stand out. Seeing flight information in an airport, and getting translations whilst in Thailand. If I attempted to use my phone’s data connection when abroad the charges would be exorbitant. That puts this sort of usage out of the reach of your average user.
For reference, I travelled to Iceland late last year. It’s a stunning country and remarkably I had decent phone coverage nearly everywhere I went. However, were I to use my phone’s data connection I would have been charged 58p a MB. My average, normal daily usage on my iPhone 5 is around 25 MB, and that doesn’t include making the sort of heavy usage of things like maps and translation services I’d expect abroad.
We need to bring the carriers with us for this to work.