Snapchat to unveil video recording sunglasses, priced at $129

CALIFORNIA, U.S. - In what could be deemed as an innovative enterprise, social media app Snapchat has revealed that it plans to release its first hardware product. 

Confirming previous rumours of Snapchat’s foray into hardware, the company is said to be releasing its first product - designed as sunglasses and called Spectacles.

The sunglasses, capable of recording 10-second long video clips will be priced at $129 and has a 115-degree-angle lens that helps record a wider field of view as opposed to a normal smartphone camera.

In order to record a video, one simply has to tap a button near the hinge, that also helps download the video wirelessly into the smartphone.

The angle of the lens helps record a circular video, mimicking the human eye lens and is capable of recording videos from the perspective of the wearer. 

Spectacle, however, was announced with no great spectacle - the company’s CEO, Evan Spiegel is said to have announced the product in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal. 

He was quoted as saying in the report that he tested the hardware for the first time on a vacation with his girlfriend. 

“It was our first vacation, and we went to Big Sur for a day or two. We were walking through the woods, stepping over logs, looking up at the beautiful trees. And when I got the footage back and watched it, I could see my own memory, through my own eyes - it was unbelievable. It’s one thing to see images of an experience you had, but it’s another thing to have an experience of the experience. It was the closest I’d ever come to feeling like I was there again.”

He further added that Spectacles would be available in one size and three different colours of black, teal and coral. 

The glasses will be available from this fall and critics have already begun comparing it to the Google Glass. 

In a bid to lower expectations from the device - Spiegel is said to have compared the product to a “toy”

Spiegel also said, “We’re going to take a slow approach to rolling them out. It’s about us figuring out if it fits into people’s lives and seeing how they like it.”

The firm meanwhile also announced that it had renamed its brand as Snap Inc. The move, industry predicts has come in the wake of the fact that the company that boasts of over 150 million users globally, no longer just owns the app Snapchat.