If you have $1,500 to spare and among the select few who signed up for Google Glass by now you should have your pair of the fancy glasses. Well its that time of the product-cycle when we get to see the gadget doctors do their thing as they dissect the glasses to shatters. Courtesy of the Catwig team we get to see the dis-assembly, the team also manage to put it back together in fully operational condition and with only minor cosmetic damage.
Google Glass consists of two main parts – a titanium frame (the “glasses”) and the “pod” that holds all the interesting components. The bill of materials is fairly similar to that of a smartphone –
- a TI OMAP 4430 chipset,
- 16GB SanDisk flash memory,
- an Elpida mobile DRAM,
- 5MP camera and
- Synaptics touch controller.
- Battery behind the wearer’s ear 570mAh (2.1Wh) battery capacity.
- the bone conduction speaker between it and the front of Glass
The cream here is the display – it’s not like anything a smartphone would have. The nHD (640 x 360) display uses clever optics that make the image appear several feet in front of you. You can read about the whole experience – from receiving a confirmation that Glass was available for pickup, through getting it at a makeshift showroom, to bringing it home and taking it apart over at Catwig.
Note that this is Google Glass Explorer, which is only available to developers. A retail version will hit next year, hopefully at a lower price.
