Oppo's Inno Day 2021 is in full swing, and the company has just announced some interesting products. It has unveiled its first processor, an image processing unit that's supposed to supercharge cameras and enable real-time RAW processing, along with its first pair of augmented reality glasses, the Oppo Air Glass.
Oppo Air Glass
The Air Glass is undeniably the more touchable and flashier product of the two. It looks like someone took a Google Glass from 2013 and translated it into a design that's more fitting for this decade. The Air Glass consists of two parts. Its frame can be worn on its own and fitted with corrective eyewear if needed. The projector and all other electronic parts sit in a separate hardware package that snaps onto the frame magnetically, allowing you to safely stow away the sensitive piece of technology when you don't need it. This module contains a battery, the Snapdragon Wear 4100, and a MicroLED projector capable of producing grayscale imagery, all in all coming in at just 30g.
“OPPO has been exploring the possibilities of Extended Reality (XR) for a long time, and with Air Glass, we have finally created a smart glass product that is truly within the reach of consumers,” said Levin Liu, OPPO Vice President and Head of OPPO Research Institute. “As its futuristic design suggests, OPPO Air Glass is set to revolutionize the way we view and consume information. The easy-to-use display can present key messages we need right in front of our eyes.”
The Air Glass can be controlled via Oppo phones or smartwatches and an integrated touch panel on the side. It is also capable of reacting to your movements, allowing you to dismiss notifications with a light shake of the head. A microphone is on board for more complicated tasks.
As for features, Oppo touts it as a passive information device that feels much like what the Google Glass was pitched as. It will display notifications, weather forecasts, calendar appointments, health data and more. It also functions as a Star Trek-like translator, allowing you to see translated transcriptions. A teleprompter mode and a navigation application let users keep their hands free when they need them the most. Notably, the Air Glass doesn't appear to have a camera, which was a problem for the Google Glass, with consumers fearing that people would use it to spy on them.
The Oppo Air Glass will be available from Q1 2022 in Mainland China only, coming in black and white and custom frame options.
Oppo MariSilicon X
Oppo has also introduced its first custom processor, the MariSilicon X imaging NPU. It's a 6nm processing unit that combines an advanced NPU, ISP, and a memory architecture to alleviate stress from the main CPU when it comes to image processing.
We're not going to bore you with the intricates of how exactly this piece of silicon works, but it packs some serious power that allows it to speed up taxing processes. Oppo says it will enable 4K AI night video recording, allowing cameras to apply noise reduction and further processing to create cleaner and sharper videos in the dark. Regular HDR images are also in for a treat, with Oppo promising up to 4x greater dynamic range and better contrast ratio. Then there's real-time RAW processing, allowing for the usual post-processing and enhancements known from compressed photos in RAW, too. All that is coupled with up to 20x faster processing than compared to the Find X3 Pro.
The MariSilicon X will debut in the Find X Series, which is slated to launch in Q1 2022.