Oppo plans to show off two AR glasses next month in California

Oppo, the Chinese phone manufacturer, is one of the brands under BBK Electronics’ umbrella along with OnePlus, Realme, Vivo, and iQOO. OnePlus ships its phones inside the U.S. while the other brands do not. Even Oppo, the fourth largest smartphone brand in the world after Samsung, Apple, and Xiaomi does not ship its handsets to the states although this might 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 sourced from an Oppo phone with an average brightness of 1400 nits. That is brighter than the typical 1000 nits (1200 nits maximum) found on the iPhone 13 Pro Max. A small coffee bean-sized Spark Micro Projector projects images onto the microLED lens.

The single-lens Oppo Air Glass was unveiled last December

The Oppo Air Glass is powered by the same Snapdragon 4100 chip used on some Wear OS smartwatches such as the TicWatch Pro 3. The Snapdragon 4100+ was found in last September’s Fossil Gen 6.

The Oppo AR Glass is a more traditionally designed device with two lenses. The device offers 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.

At the time, Oppo’s Alen Wu, head of overseas business,  said through an interpreter that before setting off for America, the company would need to solidify its position in Europe. Another possibility is that Oppo is showing off its AR glasses in North America to attract more developers for the devices before releasing the pair in Europe where the company does sell phones.

Oppo’s Air Glass and AR Glass might be able to work on non-Oppo Android phones

Another thing to consider is that Oppo uses Snapdragon Spaces, which is an open mixed-reality (XR) platform that allows firms to develop AR apps without having the basic tools needed to do so. Since the platform uses Qualcomm’s mobile hardware, in theory, Oppo’s Air Glass and AR Glass could work on non-Oppo manufactured Android devices powered by Snapdragon chips.

Yi Xu, Director of XR Technology at Oppo says, “Our belief that AR can be used to create a new digital world entirely based 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 U.S. with India, his comment-at least as far as handsets are concerned-never came true.