Snapchat Spectacles Fifth Generation With AR Capabilities, 45-Minutes of Battery Life Unveiled

Snapchat unveiled its fifth generation Spectacles with augmented reality (AR) capabilities at the Snap Partner Summit 2024 on Tuesday. They bring upgrades over the fourth generation Spectacles, including more immersive AR displays with micro projectors, dual Snapdragon processors, and longer battery life. Alongside the launch of fifth generation Spectacles, Snapchat also introduced artificial intelligence (AI) features including a new Lens, creative AI captions and more capabilities in My AI – the social media platform's AI chatbot.

Snapchat Fifth Generation Spectacles Price

Snapchat says that its fifth generation Spectacles are not available for purchase to consumers yet. Developers can get their hands on them via the Spectacles Developer Program by paying $99 (roughly Rs. 8,000) per month.

Snapchat Fifth Generation Spectacles Specifications

Snapchat fifth generation Spectacles come equipped with AR displays with Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCoS) micro-projectors. It is claimed to project vivid images both indoors and outdoors, even under direct sunlight. The Spectacles are powered by Qualcomm-sourced dual Snapdragon processors which split the computing workload. This is said to reduce the power consumption while improving the heat dissipation.

The fifth generation Spectacles can be paired to smartphones via the companion Spectacles by Snap Inc app available on the App Store. It allows users to complete the setup process, control the AR glasses, mirror the smartphone, tweak various settings like brightness and volume, and download and view the captured content.

The company says Snap Spectacles can deliver a runtime of approximately 45 minutes, compared to the 30-minute battery life of the original Spectacles. They can be charged via USB Type-C and come bundled with a cable. The latest AR glasses also come with slight design tweaks, such as a chunkier compared to the fourth generation Spectacles.

Running on Snap OS, the new AR Spectacles support hand gestures and voice commands. The social media platform is also partnering with Open AI to give developers access to multimodal large language models (LLMs) for building Lenses. They can also utilise the new Lens Studio 5.0 for moving projects quickly over to Spectacles.