Name: Intelligent Eyewear
Brand: Google

Google‘s first consumer smart glasses since Google Glass are going on sale, and the phone in your pocket decides whether you can use them. Intelligent Eyewear, built by Samsung and styled by Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, pairs with iPhones and with recent Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones. Owners of Motorola, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Oppo, Honor and every other Android brand are left out at launch, even though the glasses run Google’s own Android XR software.

That flips the usual logic. Android is meant to be the open platform and the iPhone the walled garden, yet Google went as far as earning Apple‘s Made for iPhone certification, which speeds up photo and video transfers to an iPhone. On iOS, Gemini on the glasses can place calls, send messages through iMessage and play Apple Music. For a Xiaomi or OnePlus owner, the only official answer so far is a promise from Google to say more about other phones after launch.

The glasses have no screen. They work like Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses: you talk, they listen, and a camera lets the assistant see what you see. You say “Hey Gemini” or tap the arm, and a free-flowing Gemini Live conversation starts. Look at an event poster and ask Gemini to check your calendar, glance at ingredients and ask for a recipe, or hear Google Maps directions while your phone stays in a pocket. Live translation covers more than 70 languages and tries to mimic the speaker’s voice, and a feature called Guided Vision describes surroundings aloud for people with low vision. None of it requires a paid Gemini plan, according to Engadget.

The hardware is identical across both brands. A 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera takes photos and clips of up to 90 seconds at 3K resolution, four microphones pick up your voice and record spatial audio, and two open-ear speakers play music from Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music or Audible. Google rates the battery at nine hours, and the charging case holds seven more full charges. At about 41 grams, the frames are 10 grams lighter than Meta’s new Gen 3 glasses, Wired reported, but Ars Technica points out that this is near the top of the range for ordinary glasses, before prescription lenses add weight.

Privacy is where Google is spending most of its words, because this is the category that gave the world the word “Glasshole.” A white light shows when the camera takes a photo or video, and if someone covers or tampers with it, the glasses refuse to record. Every pair has a physical off switch, and recording stops when you take them off. When you ask Gemini to look at something, those images are not saved to your Gemini history and, Google says, are not used to train AI models or target ads. The companion app also blurs bystanders’ faces and filters out their voices before anything reaches Google’s servers. “We learned through Glass that you can make people uncomfortable if you’re not clearly communicating,” Juston Payne, Google’s senior director of product management for XR, told Wired.

The limits are real. With no display, Google has no answer yet to Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses; a version with screens is being tested by people outside Google, but there is no release window. Everything also rides on Gemini, and Ars Technica found in its own testing that the assistant still fumbles calendar entries and misidentifies objects, mistakes that are harder to catch when there is no screen to check. The phone list is narrow even inside the supported brands: an iPhone 13 Pro or newer, a Pixel 7 or newer, or a Galaxy S, S FE, Z Fold, Z Flip or Fold Ultra phone running One UI 9.0 or later. Some features stay Android-only, Android Authority reports, and wrist gestures need a Pixel Watch or Galaxy Watch, which do not pair with iPhones. The recording light also has a gap: when Gemini looks at something for a visual search or a translation, the light stays off, because Google says nothing is saved, according to 9to5Google.

Availability is just as limited. Warby Parker sells its frames only in the United States, and Gentle Monster’s go on sale in the United States and South Korea. Google has confirmed no launch for Europe, Latin America, Japan, India or anywhere else.

Pre-orders opened on November 12, and the glasses reach stores on December 10. Warby Parker’s three frames, called Alden, Reid and Wren, start at $395 in optical and sun versions, while Gentle Monster’s six designs start at $449. Both prices include non-prescription lenses only, so prescription buyers will pay more. Both brands are opening pop-up demo spaces in New York for about a month, Kering Eyewear has signed on to make future frames, and Google told Wired it will explain how it plans to support other phones in 2027.

Google spent a decade living down Glass. Its second attempt fixes the look, the camera light and the data policy, then tells the owner of a Xiaomi or OnePlus phone, a customer of Google’s own Android, to come back later.

Tags: Google, Gemini, Samsung, Smart Glasses, Gentle Monster, Warby Parker