I was a bit excited when I received my Google Glass as part of Google's Explorer program. Upon taking them out of the box I found Google Glass to be sturdy and lightweight. This is great because anything I'm going to be wearing on my head all the time is going to have to hold up and I don't want it to put a lot of pressure behind my ears and on the bridge of my nose.
Glass came with at least a partial charge right out of the box. Turning Glass on and placing them on my face I was greeted by a brief tutorial that walked me through some of the basic Glass navigation options like tapping and swiping. One of my expectations with Glass was that I would be able to give it some voice commands. For the most part this is not the case. Getting used to the navigation wasn't entirely intuitive.
Myself and others in the office were anxious to put Glass on and take them for a test drive. One thing I noticed immediately is when I put them on my head it was in somewhat of a crooked manner. I think I did this without thinking in order to move the screen into my line of site. And when first using the tapping function I found myself tapping close to the camera lens rather than on the side track pad. I noticed another person in the office doing the same thing. It's as if we're so used to touchscreens it's second nature to want to touch near the display rather than the side of your head.
Glass automatically goes into a sleep mode when you're not actively using it. To wake up Glass you're supposed to be able to move your head. With the setting at just 10 degrees I found myself having to try several head gestures to get it to initiate. I eventually abandoned that method for touching the trackpad instead.
The trackpad works the way a lot of my experience with Google touch devices has worked - flaky. Sometimes I found the trackpad not registering my taps and swipes, while other times I tried to tap once and ended up registering three or even four taps. The voice navigation is somewhat limiting. Rather than being able to keep both of your hands free and give commands with your voice for the most part you're required to touch Glass. This takes away one of the biggest advantages of Glass, the hands-free experience.
The few voice commands that do work well are suggested to you on screen. Once Glass is on you can say "Ok Glass" and then follow that up with a variety of the most common tasks like take a photo, record a video, send a message, make a voice call. Of course to communicate through Glass requires you to be connected with WiFi or your phone.
I found the Glass display to be annoying. When the display is on it draws the attention of your eye. After a while this becomes tiring and I found myself frequently taking Glass off my head to give my eyes a rest. At times it made me feel tired and somewhat nauseated. I'd think people who suffer from vertigo, headaches, and motion sickness won't enjoy Glass.
Glass has a companion app for both iPhone and Android. Glass syncs with this app through Bluetooth, so you will be required to pair the device. To setup the WiFi network on Glass was a little annoying. I had to know the exact name of the network I wanted to connect to and enter it manually. There's no way to choose to connect to available networks.
To review - using Glass requires you charge your device, install the app, have the app launched, pair the app with your phone, enter the name and password of your WiFi network. This seems like a lot of steps but once configured most of these shouldn't have to be done again.
Once I had Glass all setup I decided to install the one killer app that drove me to making the purchase. Livestream makes a Glassware app that let's you broadcast from anywhere directly to a URL. That URL can be embedded into any website or shared on Facebook. My idea was to record my sons baseball games in a more convenient fashion so we could later review situations in the game. It's not always convenient to setup a camera at baseball fields.
To install the Livestream app was less than simple. It wasn't available in the Glassware Gallery on my phone like I expected. Instead I had to go to Livestreams site,, download their software, put Glass is debug mode, and then run the update with Glass plugged in via USB port to my computer. Once I had followed those steps I was able to successfully install the Livestream app.
There's no intuitive way to launch apps on Google Glass. When Glass is on you say "Ok Glass" and then the name of the app, in this case it was Livestream. If the app is on your device it will launch. However later I installed the Facebook app and it didn't work in the same manner. Rather than letting me launch a Facebook app it simply gave me the option to share to Facebook after snapping a photo or video.
Another bummer is the fact I can only share my photos and videos to Google Plus by default. There's no way to utilize the video I record. If you install the Facebook and Twitter apps you can post them there but if you want to edit that video on your Mac or PC it's not happening. This kills the idea of recording my son's baseball games and creating highlight compilations.
The Livestream app I must say worked well and I had fun broadcasting a few minutes of video from our office. However, as I expected, recording video and transmitting ran the battery down after a few minutes. Since I had run the battery down I figured it was time to stop playing with Glass and give it adequate time for a complete charge and download the latest update.
Before I received my Google Glass I'd spoken to a representative at Google about concerns I had with potential Glass battery life. Some of the reviews of the first generation had complained the battery life was too short. He assured me the newest software update would extend the battery life and it wouldn't be an issue and recommended the first thing I do with Glass is charge it completely and download the latest software update XE16. Glass comes with Glassware XE12 out of the box.
I couldn't remember what the Google representative told me about how to download the Glass update. It took a few hours for Glass to fully charge and once charged I set out to complete the update. To my dismay I found the update happens automatically. That sounds convenient, but the instructions were to leave your Glass charging and the update will automatically be available. I went to view the version in my Glass and found the update still wasn't available. I ended up verifying my Glass was connected to the internet and left them charging for another couple of hours before I could finally see an update was available. The Glass website said the update could take hours but I found it actually only took about 10 minutes.
Once the update completed my Livestream app was no longer on the device. I tried to reinstall it but it was to no avail. The Livestream installer said everything was successful but I wasn't able to launch the Livestream app from my Glass. I sent an email to Livestream and they confirmed it was an issue that would be fixed the next time they release an update to their Glassware software.
Another thing that happened when I updated to XE16, I lost my ability to video call. Apparently Google decided to remove this feature because only about 10% of people were using it and it didn't work well enough to meet their standards. I had placed video calls earlier in the day and found it worked well enough, although frequently that type of experience has to do with available bandwidth. In short two of the most killer features no longer work with Glass. Both of those features tied into the one thing I thought Glass would be good for which was letting people see what I'm seeing from a remote location.
One of the things I can say Glass does well is phone calls. However it offers little to no advantage over a hands-free setup in your car or a Bluetooth headset. After adding my Google contacts to my Glass app on my phone (a seemingly unnecessary step) I was able to place and receive phone calls with relative ease.
I decided to wear them on a trip to the grocery store. I figured this would be a good opportunity to see how people would react to wearing the contraption. I'm not the type of person to worry about embarrassing myself in public. For example_ last week I recorded myself doing a five minute workout in an American Airlines club in front of about 30 travelers to show people you could still workout when you're traveling. None-the-less when I went into the grocery store with Google Glass I felt self-conscience. It seemed like people were looking at me wondering what the device was about.
Finally at the deli the lady behind the counter spoke up and said "nice glass". I didn't have the lens in and she asked if I knew about the "new ones" with the lenses. I didn't go into explaining to her I'd order them the day prior and they were as new as it gets. She proceeded to explain to me she was in Google's "beta or whatever" for Glass. When I walked to the front of the store a college aged guy noticed my Glass and couldn't help blurting out "He's got Glass" to his buddy. They both looked at me like they desperately wanted to try them on but they had just unexpectedly turned off and I couldn't figure out how to get them back on. I suspect the battery abruptly died after shooting about seven minutes of video walking around the store. I was eventually able to hold down the reset button for an extended period of time and get them to come back on once I got home. I'm not sure if this was battery related or not.
Overall I don't think Google Glass is the next big thing. It may have a few novel and case specific uses but it won't be for the masses. I come from the notion most people don't want their gadgets to make their life easier and stay out of the way. Glass is literally right in your face all the time. I don't think the masses are ready for the wide adoption of technology that makes you look like a cyborg or techno-geek.
The screen is useable but nauseating to look at. It's just not natural to focus on something so close to your face. The voice commands are sparse and the trackpad doesn't work well. The battery requires frequent recharging and charges somewhat slowly. There were several times where I lost the Bluetooth connection to my iPhone which rendered things like navigation useless when on the go. The device must be used in tandem with the Glass app on your phone so you'll still be toting that device with you everywhere you go. There were several times where Glass warned me the device was running too hot and need to cool down to run smoothly.
My junk drawer is full of electronic devices that were supposed to make my life easier but instead ended up being impractical. It looks like Google Glass will just be another one of them.