Google Revises Glass With More RAM The Day Before I/O

[Photo by Ted Eytan, used under Creative Commons]

Well, the timing is nothing if not interesting: one day before its I/O keynote, Google has just given the Glass hardware a small hardware upgrade.

Without much fanfare, Google has quietly bumped the memory in newly shipped Glass units up from 682MB to a full 2GB.

That gives Google (and Glass developers, for that matter) roughly 3x as much memory to play with. With I/O starting tomorrow, it’s more than reasonable to assume they’ll announce some features justifying the RAM upgrade.

But first, Google has also announced a few new small features launching today:

• Google Now will now try to keep track of where you parked (by way of accelerometer data, as opposed to something like Bluetooth connectivity a la Agent — so don’t expect perfect accuracy), and will give you automatic shipping alerts.
• Camera framing: Saying “Ok glass, show the view finder” will now draw brackets around the onscreen display, helping Glass photographers better line-up their shots.

Google also says that people should notice better battery life and overall performance improvements, though many of the upgrades at play there have been rolling out over the past few weeks.

If you’re part of the Google Glass “Explorer” program (or just keep a particularly close eye on Glass), you probably know: this isn’t the first time that Google has revised their hardware.

Back in December, Google revised Glass to add support for a dedicated pair of microUSB stereo headphones and custom prescription lens. With that release, Google allowed existing Glass owners to swap their hardware for free.

Alas, it doesn’t look like a similar deal is in place this time. If you’ve got Glass already, your unit is henceforth obsolete.