So second day of having the Google Glass has been quite interesting. Firstly I was keen to see how the battery would last, so I charged it full at the beginning of the day and see how it panned out over the day.
The battery lasted till about 9pm from a full charge around 11am. I didn’t really use it that much, perhaps my total play time with it was about 70 minutes or so.
I tried out the recipe application where you can ask it to find a recipe and show the instructions on the screen. Besides this I hardly had a chance to test it today until later tonight when I was about to pop over to my parents house for dinner.
I decided to test out the directions features and also what my parents reaction to it was. Firstly I was a little concerned whether it would get in the way whilst I was driving. Considering it’s just a short 10 minute drive I figured I can go slower to see if it was a nuisance or not.
Whilst I was in the car before I left I asked GG for directions and it hesitated a little bit. That’s because I had just gotten outside of the wifi range, so now I had to rely on tethering my iphone personal hotspot in order to keep GG accessing the web for information.
There is a concern here that there is such heavy reliance on this connectivity in order for any functionality to be delivered through the GG. I think if it wants to appeal to consumers, a lot of this connectivity and data transfer has to be more seamless without the distractions of needing to constantly nanny the GG to make sure it can talk to the web.
So having got the directions I headed off. At first I was unsure and just watched the road rather than care about the GG, but after a few turns I could see out of the corner of my eye that the directional map was there showing my movement and also the road ahead. It was kind of nice, almost reassuring. I could also hear the voice in my head telling me to turn right!
Anyways, I would say that with practice it is probably a useful tool for navigation if you are walking or taking public transport. In a car I would rely on the sat nav rather than the GG.
On arriving at my parents they didn’t even know what this thing was on my face and their first reaction was that it was some sort of medical device and there was something wrong with my eye!
Interestingly my mother was a little curious and did try it on and even took a photo, but their initial reaction was one to consider. If GG did become mainstream, would a lot of people who are not exposed to technology wonder what the hell was going on with people. Rims with no glasses but some funky tech gadget.
Anyways, that’s what I have to report for today on the GG 30 day challenge. I’m quite disappointed by the battery life and also the fact that I hardly used it. I’m also concerned with the overheating, from what I’ve read this could be due to a number of things from hardware issues to apps using too much power and hence heating up the device. What if some poorly trained app developer created an app that sucked the battery in minutes?
Overall, I’m still waiting to be wowed. Since yesterday when I unboxed the thing, video of which is now on YouTube and below, I haven’t been mega impressed just yet. Perhaps I’ll think of something or some business opportunity in the next 28 days.
I think what will be more interesting than the device or the functionality, is going to be people’s reaction to it and how it impacts society and the way other people behave around me.
[videojs youtube=”http://youtu.be/_QWar2nPvRU”]