The Great Unseeing: Why the Future of AI Glasses Is Camera-less

Just a few days ago, Apple officially launched its new iPhone series, with the foldable iPhone Duo capturing the most attention. However, to achieve its foldable form, the device made compromises on several features, such as losing its independent telephoto lens and Face ID. This highlights a fundamental truth in tech: it's nearly impossible to create a perfect, all-in-one product, especially for devices worn close to the body for extended periods. Apple's own Vision Pro, which tried to pack display, computing, and sensing into one headset, ended up being too heavy and power-hungry for long-term wear.

This same principle now applies to AI glasses. For years, the trend, kicked off by Meta, was to add more features—cameras, visual recognition, AI Q&A, displays, and extra sensors—into the frame. Despite efforts to minimize weight, these glasses typically hovered around 40 grams. But this year, a new trend is taking hold. A growing number of products are ditching the camera while keeping the display, prompting a critical question: for all-day wear, what features truly deserve a permanent place on our faces?

As early as 2024, Even Realities launched its first AI glasses, the Even G1. It had no camera or speakers but featured a binocular monochrome green display for tasks like navigation, translation, and AI-powered notifications. While competitors were adding more sensors, the Even G1 carved its own path. More manufacturers are now adopting this camera-less, display-focused approach, each targeting different use cases—from daily information and AI assistants to dedicated business and meeting scenarios.

  Even Realities G1

This trend is gaining momentum with new and updated products. Even Realities' successor, the Even G2, continues the camera-less philosophy, focusing on improving the display resolution, refresh rate, and field of view while reducing lens thickness by 30%. Another product, the RayNeo iO, emphasizes AI capabilities for daily use. Weighing only 34g, it uses dual Micro-LED displays and a diffraction waveguide to present AI answers, notifications, and real-time translations, relying solely on its microphone array and voice context to build a long-term memory for its AI assistant.

Even Meta, a pioneer of camera-equipped glasses, is reportedly launching a new model codenamed "Luna" this fall, which will remove the camera but retain its audio and AI features. The decision to remove the camera brings significant advantages beyond just features. It fundamentally simplifies the hardware architecture. Camera-equipped glasses often require a dual-chip system—one high-performance chip for image processing and one low-power chip for audio and connectivity. Without the camera, a single, low-power SoC can handle all necessary tasks, as seen in the RayNeo iO. This reduces system complexity, lowers the bill of materials (BOM) cost, and improves power efficiency, leading to better battery life and more affordable prices.

Smart Glasses Weight Comparison

Beyond hardware, removing the camera solves a critical issue that technology alone cannot: privacy. A forward-facing camera can create discomfort and suspicion in social and professional settings. By eliminating the camera, these new AI glasses bypass the most direct privacy concerns, making them more suitable for the long-term, all-day wear they are designed for. Meanwhile, the display remains because vision is our most efficient sense for information intake. At-a-glance notifications, navigation, and translations are far more intuitive than audio-only feedback.

This shift doesn't signal the end of cameras in smart glasses but rather a diversification of the market. The industry is likely splitting into three distinct paths.

One category will retain cameras and audio for first-person recording and visual AI. A second will focus on the camera-less, display-centric model for lightweight, all-day productivity. The third will be the premium, all-in-one category that includes cameras, displays, and full AI capabilities, pursuing the ultimate vision of a spatial computing terminal. This divergence is a natural sign of a maturing market, where products are no longer trying to be everything to everyone but are instead tailored to solve specific needs for different users.

Where do you stand in this split? Which type of smart glasses would you actually wear every day? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!