Calling friends and family on WhatsApp can happen from your sunnies without needing to take out the phone.
Depending on how far advanced into the future you like living, there’s a chance you’ve already bought into the world of net-connected smart fashion accessories. There aren’t many, but they are growing in number, and one of the additions from last year is now gaining a feature that might make you seem less reliant on your phone, even if it is needed to be close by.
If you’ve ever wondered how the humble pair of sunglasses could become smarter, you only need to look at what Facebook (now Meta) delivered last year in a collaboration with sunglasses company Ray-Ban, arriving in a product that basically blended the best of both worlds: a social sharing pair of sunnies with a camera built into the front, and a microphone and speaker system built into the design.
Sunglasses for more than just fashion and eye-protection was the point of the Ray-Ban Stories, a neat concept that extended on the Bose Frames, which was a pair of sunnies with a decent sound system built into the design.
Ray-Ban’s approach did a little more, and allowed you to capture photos and videos, and share them with your friends and family on Facebook, while also bringing the music and phone connection in the same design, but it has been limited to Facebook up until now.
A recent addition changes that, with Meta’s WhatsApp being added to the mix, allowing you to connect your WhatsApp account with a pair of RayBan Stories, and have it read out messages and even make calls all without taking the phone out of your pocket.
The addition still means you’ll need to call up the Facebook voice assistant on the Ray-Ban Stories glasses by calling out “Hey Facebook”, but you’ll be able to say “send a message” to someone, or even “call” someone, firing up the functions in the Facebook View app and doing what you ask.
It’s an addition coming to both iOS and Android shortly, with an app and firmware update rolling out in the coming days.
