Google may have gone back to the drawing board for a rethink of its Glass smart eyewear after sony made its SmartEyeglass gadget available to pre-order in the UK and Germany.

Described as a “developer edition”, the SED-E1 eyewear will cost £620 when it goes on sale in March, at which point it will also be available in eight other countries. However, a version for non-developers won’t go on sale until 2016 at the earliest.

Sony’s device gives users an augmented reality experience — text, symbols and images, such as street directions, are superimposed on the lenses — is a lot cheaper than Glass.

Smart glasses are like regular specs with a transparent screen in the lenses, so you can see features like emails and notifications floating in front of your very eyes. Paired with your phone, the glasses can show you information or tell you what’s going on with the apps in your pocket.

The SED-E1 displays information in the colour green only. The battery lasts around 2 hours 30 minutes. The glasses won’t come cheap however, with pricing coming it at $US840, a bargain however compared to Google Glass’ $US1499 price-point before it was axed.

As well as the augmented reality features Sony’s spectacles will also allow users to snap pictures, follow GPS directions and view text messages. The glasses feature a built-in 3-megapixel CMOS image sensor, accelerometer, gyro, electronic compass, and brightness sensor, behind the 3-millimeter lenses.

The device also comes with a circular controller that clips onto a user’s shirt or jacket collar containing a microphone, speaker, battery and touch sensor. Sony said a small number of SmartEyeglass apps will be available through Google’s Play Store, including apps for Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, calendar, RSS and voice control.

Preorders for Sony’s SmartEyeglass were made available Tuesday in an edition for app developers in 10 countries, with sales in the U.S. starting in March.

SmartEyeglass Developer Edition SED-E1: true augmented reality

  Gadgets, Google Glass, SmartEyeglass, Sony smart glasses