If you see someone on the street wearing Google Glass, you may feel one of two urges.
If you’re curious and into technology, you may wonder what Google Glass looks like when all its little pieces are taken apart. If you’re not into technology and think Google Glass is either scary or obnoxious, you may wonder what Google Glass would look like smashed apart in a bunch of little pieces on the sidewalk.
Either way, you’re in luck. Scott Torborg and Star Simpson have taken the liberty of tearing apart their $1,500 investment so you don’t have to. Don’t worry: like all good teardowns, this one has a relatively happy ending. “We were able to reassemble Glass after this teardown and it still operated perfectly, albeit with cosmetic damage,” say Torborg and Simpson.
As you can see in the photo below, Google Glass consists of a titanium frame, some plastic housing, and some parts consistent with what you’d find in many smartphones. There are a few exceptions, however.
For starters, there’s a touchpad. It’s the long, green piece in the middle of the above photo (here’s a close-up). It’s made by Synaptics, a company that makes trackpads for many laptops. Second, the battery (here’s a close-up) is obviously far smaller than your average smartphone battery. For reference, it’s about 40% the capacity of the iPhone 5’s battery. Next, we’ve got a bone-conduction speaker (here’s a close-up), which uses your skull to transmit sound instead of mounting an external speaker. Finally, we have a tiny 640×360 display (here’s a close-up) that’s passed to a prism to “make the display’s image appear to float a few feet from your face, in the top right corner of your vision,” say Torborg and Simpson.
Everything else is relatively standard: there’s a processor, memory, storage and a camera “of typical smartphone-level size and format,” according to Torborg and Simpson, all of which can be shoehorned into something that sits on the right-hand side of your head. Check out the entire teardown here.
Google Glass Teardown [Catwig.com]