SmartEyeglass

SmartEyeglass
Information
Type	Augmented Reality
Subtype	Eyewear
Developer	Sony
Devices	SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1
Website	SmartEyeglass Website

SmartEyeglass is an Augmented Reality eyewear platform developed by Sony. Sony announced the glasses in September 2014. Its first version, the SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1, was announced on February 17, 2015, when it became available for pre-order in the United Kingdom and Germany. SmartEyeglass became available in March, 2015 for 840 dollars (plus tax in the United States). Sony said it was aiming to commercialize the glasses for both consumers and enterprise customers in 2016.

The glasses have transparent binocular lenses that superimpose text, symbols and images on the wearer's view. They do not run apps themselves: they connect wirelessly to an Android smartphone, and apps on the phone collect the glasses' sensor data and send display output back to the eyewear. The lenses use Sony's holographic waveguide optics, which the company says reach a thickness of 3.0 mm and a see-through transmittance of 85% without half mirrors in the wearer's line of sight. Sony sold the hardware as a developer edition, alongside a software development kit (SDK), to encourage app development ahead of a planned commercial product.

Reviewed 27 September 2026. Checked all new text, prices, dates, spec tables and quotes against Sony's 2014-2015 press releases and blog posts, the cited press coverage, Lux Research release and the two JSID paper records. About review dates.

History

Announcement and SDK preview (2014)

Sony showed the SmartEyeglass at its booth at IFA in Berlin earlier in September 2014. On September 19, 2014, Sony Corporation formally announced the development of the glasses and released a Developer Preview of the SmartEyeglass SDK on the same day. The prototype specifications listed a binocular see-through display with a separate controller, 419 x 138 pixel resolution in monochrome green, a 3-megapixel still camera and support for Android 4.1 or later. Hiroshi Mukawa, head of the SmartEyeglass project at Sony Corporation, said at the SDK launch: "This is about going beyond hardware". Sony said at the time that it planned to sell the glasses to developers by the end of its fiscal year 2014, with the aim of accelerating a consumer product.

Sony's announcement listed several partner apps in development: a "CookPad for SmartEyeglass" cooking assistant from COOKPAD, the "its-mo NAVI for SmartEyeglass" pedestrian navigation app from ZENRIN DataCom, a runners' app called "Glassthon" from K-Opticom and ACCESS, and a local social feed app called "Localive" from Euclid Labs. Runners wearing SmartEyeglass prototypes were scheduled to trial Glassthon during the Osaka Marathon on October 26, 2014. Sony's blog post also mentioned a travel companion app from Wikitude.

In December 2014 Sony released an updated Developer Preview of the SDK with an AR rendering API. According to App Developer Magazine, the API uses three coordinate systems so that text and graphics can stay overlaid on fixed real-world positions as the wearer turns or tilts their head.

SmartEyeglass Attach! and CES 2015

On December 17, 2014, Sony announced a separate, experimental Single-Lens Display Module that clips onto the arms of ordinary glasses, goggles or sunglasses. It has a 0.23-inch color OLED microdisplay with a resolution of 640 x 400 pixels, maximum brightness of 800 cd/m2, a contrast ratio of 10,000:1 or more, an ARM Cortex-A7 processor, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and a 400 mAh battery. Sony gave its weight as about 40 g (22 g for the display arm and 18 g for the secondary arm) and its diagonal angle of view as 13 degrees, which it compared to a 16-inch display 2 meters away. Sony exhibited the module at CES 2015 (January 6-9, 2015, Las Vegas) as a concept model named "SmartEyeglass Attach!", designed to attach to sports eyewear. The company said it aimed to start mass production of the module within a year and to supply it to eyewear makers, electronics manufacturers and business-solution providers.

The binocular SmartEyeglass was also on show at CES 2015. Sony demonstrated workplace apps developed by APX Labs that used SAP's cloud computing system: one helped warehouse staff pick the correct component, and another gave step-by-step engine maintenance instructions at a repair shop. InformationWeek reported that the Developer Edition works with APX Labs' Skylight enterprise software.

Developer Edition release (2015)

On February 17, 2015, Sony announced the SED-E1 SmartEyeglass Developer Edition for sale in Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, with pre-orders opening in the UK and Germany that day. Enterprise customers in France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden could also buy it. Sales ran through the SmartEyeglass page of Sony Developer World, Sony's app development support site, and Sony released the official version of the SDK at the same time.

SED-E1 launch prices (Sony, February 2015)

Region	Price
Japan	100,000 yen + tax
United States	$840 + tax
United Kingdom	520 pounds + tax
Other applicable countries	670 euros + tax

Sony first gave the release date as March 10, 2015. Revisions to its announcement on March 6 and March 17 changed this to the end of March and then to March 27, 2015. On March 27, 2015, Sony Mobile's blog announced the launch of the Developer Edition, "now available for purchase through Developer World in ten different countries around the world". In October 2015, the US retailer B&H Photo announced that the SED-E1 was in stock at its New York store; Android Central reported the B&H price as $899.

Hardware

Developer Edition

SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1 - Wearable Eyeglass connected to a small, round Controller through a cable.

Optics and display

The display module uses what Sony calls holographic waveguide technology. Image light from an optical engine travels through a glass plate about 1 mm thick, guided by holographic optical elements embedded on both sides of the plate, and is then delivered to the eyes. With protective plates in front of and behind the waveguide, each lens is 3 mm thick, and Sony gives its see-through transmittance as 85%. The display is monochrome green. According to Sony, the monochrome display uses less energy than a color display while reaching a luminance of up to 1,000 cd/m2, keeping text legible in a wide range of conditions.

Sony researchers had published work on holographic waveguide eyewear displays before SmartEyeglass. In a 2009 paper whose first author was Mukawa, Sony researchers described a full-color eyewear display with over 85% see-through transmittance and a 16-degree horizontal field of view. It used planar waveguides, each 1.4 mm thick, with in-coupling and out-coupling reflection volume holograms. The out-coupling hologram acted as the optical combiner, and its wavelength selectivity accounted for the high transmittance.

In 2018, Sony researchers described a process for laminating holographic optical elements onto a plastic substrate. They wrote that plastic waveguide combiners make AR glasses lighter and unbreakable, unlike glass substrates, and that roll-to-roll hologram recording could allow larger volumes at lower cost.

Sensors, controller and connectivity

The glasses carry a CMOS image sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, electronic compass, brightness sensor and microphones, and use GPS location from the connected phone. A separate controller is connected by a cable. IEEE Spectrum described it as a badge-sized device worn on clothing that holds a touch sensor, microphone, speaker and the battery, and provides the wireless link to the smartphone. TechCrunch reported that the controller also has NFC.

The table compares the prototype specifications Sony published in September 2014 with the Developer Edition specifications from February 2015.

Item	Prototype (September 2014)	Developer Edition SED-E1 (February 2015)
Display type	Binocular see-through with a separate controller	Binocular see-through with a separate controller
Resolution	419 x 138 pixels	419 x 138 pixels
Angle of view	Not listed	Diagonal 20 degrees (horizontal 19 x vertical 6)
Image color	Monochrome green with 8-bit color depth	Monochrome green with 8-bit grey scale
Frame rate	Not listed	15 fps
Brightness (max.)	1,000 cd/m2	1,000 cd/m2
See-through transmittance	More than 85%	More than 85%
Sensors	Accelerometer, gyroscope, electronic compass, brightness sensor, microphones	Accelerometer, gyroscope, electronic compass, brightness sensor, microphone, noise-canceling microphone
Camera	Still 3 megapixels; movie VGA (640 x 480)	Still 3 megapixels; soundless video as a JPEG stream, QVGA-equivalent at 15 fps (through a camera API)
Sound	Speaker in controller	Speaker in controller
Battery life	Not listed	About 150 minutes without the camera; about 80 minutes with the camera
Connectivity	Bluetooth 3.0, IEEE 802.11b/g/n	Bluetooth 3.0, IEEE 802.11b/g
Phone requirement	Android 4.1 or later (4.3 or later for video)	Android 4.4 or later
Weight	About 77 g (glasses without cable); about 44 g (controller)	About 77 g (glasses without cable); about 44 g (controller)
Dimensions	Not listed	Eyewear folded about 180 x 39 x 72 mm; controller about 54 x 21 x 60 mm; cable about 63 cm

Sony's battery-life figures assume the display is always on at default brightness, and it notes that using the wireless LAN connection also shortens battery life.

Apps

SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1 Apps

SmartEyeglass apps run on the connected Android device. Engadget noted that unlike Google Glass, which hosts apps on the headset, Sony's model requires developers to build smartphone apps that connect to the glasses. Sony's 2014 examples of consumer uses were walking navigation, reading a recipe while cooking and viewing information about a player during a sports match. In 2015 it added professional uses, such as instructions for workers at a manufacturing site or visual information for security officers, and consumer uses such as social media messages at an event or sightseeing information at a tourist spot. Sony described these as potential uses still under study, not tested and confirmed use cases. Tech Advisor's February 2015 hands-on described SmartEyeglass demonstrations of an AR shooting game, a speech translation tool and a facial recognition app, and fitness features such as run mapping on the Attach module.

Developer

SmartEyeglass SDK

SmartEyeglass SDK

The SmartEyeglass SDK is an add-on to the Android SDK and includes an emulator, so developers can build and test apps without the hardware. Sony listed the Developer Preview contents as the emulator, sample code, getting-started tutorials, in-depth developer guides, design guidelines, API references, test instructions and publishing guidelines. The official release, which Sony described as an upgraded version of the Developer Preview available since September 2014, came out with the Developer Edition hardware in February 2015. InformationWeek identified it as SmartEyeglass SDK version 1.0.

Reception

Early coverage focused on the design. Engadget said the prototype "looks like a bulky pair of 3D glasses that have been modified" and called it "a Google Glass clone of sorts". TechCrunch wrote that the design "can charitably be described as a chunkier version of the 3D glasses you get handed at the cinema" and that a "hands-free device that includes a wired controller seems rather cumbersome". In InformationWeek, Forrester analyst J.P. Gownder said "I don't think this device looks so good" and "I think Sony is going to face a lot of trouble with this one", saying that Sony, unlike Epson, did not have much of a brand in the enterprise market and that in an enterprise context HoloLens had more to offer. Analyst Patrick Moorhead told IEEE Spectrum: "I don't see anything yet that would distinguish it from HoloLens or Glass." In its hands-on, Tech Advisor judged that "the SmartEyeglass Attach makes the most sense to us in terms of practicality and mass appeal".

In January 2016, Lux Research published an analysis of more than 70 enterprise smart glasses deployments. It named SmartEyeglass "the top performer for use in customer service and quality control" because the glasses are light, small and competitively priced, and ranked the Osterhout Design Group R-7 as the best all-around device.

See also

• Google Glass
• Epson Moverio
• Waveguide display
• Smart glasses