Samsung has officially entered the smart glasses race. At its Galaxy Unpacked event in London on July 22, the company revealed the full feature set of its upcoming intelligent eyewear — offering the clearest picture yet of how it plans to challenge Meta’s dominance in a category that is growing fast and drawing increasing regulatory scrutiny.
What Samsung confirmed on stage
The glasses, developed with eyewear brands Gentle Monster and Warby Parker, include a built-in camera, open-ear audio, and support for Google Gemini. That camera does more than take photos — pointed at a whiteboard or presentation, it can read the content on screen and distill it into organised notes. The glasses can also summarise incoming messages, provide real-time navigation guidance, and support live translation.
Battery life runs up to nine hours per charge, with the charging case able to deliver up to seven additional full charges. Under the hood, the glasses use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon AR1 Gen1 chip and require a connected smartphone to function.
Samsung’s executive vice president James Choi said the company is exploring gesture-based controls that would work through its smartwatch and Galaxy Ring products. A tap gesture on the Galaxy Watch 9 can trigger actions on the glasses — the first visible thread of Samsung’s strategy to build an interconnected wearable ecosystem rather than a collection of isolated gadgets.
Works with iPhones too
One of the more surprising details confirmed at Unpacked: the glasses work with iPhones. Google confirmed Gemini on Android XR operates cross-platform — a buyer who uses an iPhone can still pair with and use the Galaxy Glasses, a material commercial decision that opens the addressable market to roughly half of global smartphone users who run iOS.
On pricing
Samsung did not disclose the price of the glasses but said it was positioning the device as a “premium” product. James Choi was careful with his words: “We want to make it reasonable, but as I mentioned, the quality of the product itself, we want to position as premium. It doesn’t mean that it’s crazy expensive.” Supply chain leaks ahead of the event had pointed to a starting price of $379, which would put them above Meta’s entry-level $299 glasses but well below Snap’s $2,195 Specs.
More designs at launch
When the device launches this fall, there will be “more designs” and colours beyond what Samsung has shown off so far. The two styles shown at Unpacked — one from Gentle Monster with a bold fashion-forward aesthetic, one from Warby Parker with a more classic everyday look — represent just the opening range.
The market Samsung is walking into
Meta held 69.2% share of the smart glasses market in the first quarter of 2026, according to IDC. That’s a commanding position built over five years and millions of units sold. Samsung’s pitch is not to beat Meta on familiarity or price — it’s to offer a deeper AI assistant, tighter ecosystem integration, and a cross-platform approach that Meta cannot match while locked to its own hardware and software.
There is also a timing note worth flagging. Samsung Galaxy Glasses landed at Unpacked just two days after New York State banned smart glasses from all 1,240 of its state courts. Samsung and Google have not yet published a data policy governing what Gemini does with footage captured through the camera — the same regulatory gap that has put Meta’s glasses under scrutiny in Texas and Philadelphia. That question will need answering before the fall retail launch.
What comes next
The Galaxy Glasses are heading to retail in select markets this autumn. A second model — codenamed Haean — is in the pipeline for 2027, adding a micro-LED display that would bring genuine AR visual overlays. That follow-on is where the category gets truly interesting, but Samsung is playing it smart by establishing the platform and the brand first, before tackling the harder engineering problem of the display.
For now, the glasses exist. The price is coming. And Meta’s five-year head start just got a serious challenger.