Google Glasses expand beyond wearable camera

There's really no denying the fact that Google Glass has made a splash with the technophiles of the world, but so far, the campaign surrounding Google Glass has been mostly hype and not nearly enough talk. The Wall Street Journal got to spend some time with Google Glass recently, and thankfully gave us some new details about next year's headset. Needless to say, Google Glass has quite a few things going for it, but at this early stage in development, some key components are still absent.

Of course we know that Google Glass is meant to give us hands-free smartphone functionality, but The Wall Street Journal's write-up goes a little bit deeper than that. That tiny little screen you see on the right side of the glasses houses the heads-up display, which is navigated through voice commands. The heads up display offers a number of different options, from using the camera to record video and take pictures to opening up Google Maps. The author of the story, Spencer Ante, says that the expensive pair of specs weighs only a few ounces, has a built-in battery that has taken up residence in one of the arms, and features two microphones to pick up your voice commands.

While that all sounds exciting, unfortunately Google didn't have most of the big features up and running when Ante got to test them out. The ability to snap a picture was there, as was time-lapse functionality, allowing users to snap a new picture every few seconds. Other than that, however, it seems that Google Glass is still very much in the prototype phase, as other other features like Google Maps and calling hadn't been implemented yet.

The idea is certainly solid, but at the moment, it seems that Google hasn't implemented enough features to be able to recommend picking up a pair of the $1,500 glasses. Google Glass is currently scheduled for an early 2013 launch, and you can bet that by the time headsets become available for purchase, they'll be much more fleshed out than they are now. Stay tuned, because we'll undoubtedly be hearing more about Google Glass soon.