The new Google Glass headset is better, faster, less dorky

But it's still all business
Product photography of the Google Glass wearable.
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Google has announced the next iteration of its Glass smart glasses, the Glass Enterprise Edition 2. Like the previous Enterprise edition, the new glasses aren't made for general consumers but specifically for business use.

Google says the new Glass is faster, running on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon XR1 chip, which is made especially for VR and AR products. However Google Glass is more what we'd call "assisted reality" - it acts like a heads-up display, projecting images into the wearer's eye, rather than overlaying those objects on the real world.

Read this: The best augmented reality glasses 2019

The Enterprise Edition 2 packs in a bigger battery and, thanks to a partnership with Smith Optics, comes with the option of "safety frames" that help it look more like a regular pair of glasses and less like a cyborg accessory. There's a beefed-up camera and it runs on Android now too, and Google has added support for Android Enterprise Mobile Device Management.

While you might be surprised to be reading about Google Glass in 2019, the arrival of the Enterprise Edition 2 isn't all that shocking. While the original Google Glass was considered a flop by many (and a privacy headache for Google), the company changed tack in 2015 and started selling Glass as a purely business product.

Google even says it's moved the Glass team out of its Google X moonshots division and made it part of the core company, a sign that it's taking Glass more seriously. But still, don't expect anything for consumers on the horizon, with augmented reality glasses not yet lucrative enough to go mainstream.

The Enterprise Edition 2 costs $999, which is less than the original Google Glass's $1,500 price tag. It will be cheaper still for some companies who are able to strike up partnerships with Google.

The new Google Glass headset is better, faster, less dorky



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Hugh Langley

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Now at Business Insider, Hugh originally joined Wareable from TechRadar where he’d been writing news, features, reviews and just about everything else you can think of for three years.

Hugh is now a correspondent at Business Insider.

Prior to Wareable, Hugh freelanced while studying, writing about bad indie bands and slightly better movies. He found his way into tech journalism at the beginning of the wearables boom, when everyone was talking about Google Glass and the Oculus Rift was merely a Kickstarter campaign - and has been fascinated ever since.

He’s particularly interested in VR and any fitness tech that will help him (eventually) get back into shape. Hugh has also written for T3, Wired, Total Film, Little White Lies and China Daily.


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