What's Inside Google Glass

So far the device has been sold to a few lucky Explorers for 1499$. It's very expensive and many people have wondered what's inside the device and what the real costs are to figure out what the public price will be.

Many surveys have been conducted and it looks like most of the people won't spend more than 300-400$ for the device. In 2012, Google employees were quoted saying that Glass would be sold at roughly the price of contemporary smartphones. Now let's try to figure out what Google Glass costs and what the price could be.

First, let's go down the component level and try to estimate the production costs. A teardown of some techies at Catwig has made it very easy to estimate the price of the device.

Once a Glass Explorer receives an invitation to participate to the program they have to schedule an in-person appointment at one of the three "Glass studios" (Mountain View, Los angeles, New York) to get the device. At this appointment a Google employee walk you through the setup and usage of the device.

Glass arrives in a box that includes accessories : tinted shield, clear shield, charger/AC adapter, USB cable, drawstring soft case. The build quality isn't less than what you can expect from a device that costs as much as a brand new laptop. It has a solid feel and a great surface finish.

Side touchpad

When you remove the casing, it exposes a few parts, including a separate touchpad module on the right side of the unit. Indeed, a Glass user can interact with the sensor by tapping its right temple. The touchpad is a full custom module made by Synaptics and is driven by a Synaptics T1320A touchpad controller.

Main CPU Board

The inwards-facing side of the board hols an RF (radio frequency) module, some small connectors and copper noting that this is a GOOGLE [X] production. The core chips powering Glass are a TI OMAP4430 16GB of SanDisk flash and an Elpida mobile DRAM chip. This board also includes a SiRFstarIV GSD4e GPS engine and a Bluetooth/WiFi module. A flex PCB and an RF cable, anchored with some metal tabs and a U.FL connector, trailed from this board to the behind-the-ear pod. 

Behind-Ear Module

To balance the weight evenly, Glass keeps its battery in a rounded bit behind the wearer's ear. When you open the device you can find a single-cell Lithium Polymer battery, which has a capacity of 2.1Wh. Only thing is that it can't be user-replaceable!

Speaker

Just forward of the battery pod there is a bone conduction speaker. It's a cutting-edge technology, allowing you to get the sound through the bones.

Display Assembly

A flex PCB connects the main logic board to an assembly containing the display, camera and some other sensors. It wraps around and through the frame holding those components. The flexprint PCB holds Glass' inertial sensor, an InvenSense MPU-9150. There's also a Wolfson WM7231 MEMS microphone. There's an additional identical chip on the main logic board, suggesting that Glass use a dual microphone noise-cancellation system. 

Display

The Glass display is very small and owns a native resolution of 640x360, the pixels are roughly 1/8th the physical width of those on the iPhone 5s retina display.  The high resolution display is the equivalent of a 25 inch high definition screen from eight feet away.

Optics

Glass uses a folded light pathway consisting of only a small handful of optical elements. Collectively they make the display's image appear to float a few feet from your face, in the top right corner of your vision. The prism focuses directly on the retina allowing you to see a very sharp image.

Camera

The Glass camera can be compared to a smartphone's one in terms of size and quality. It is a 5-megapixel unit with 720p video capture. It isn't perfectly aligned with the wearer's eye and the camera and display appear to talk to the CPU independently. 

It costs around 200$ to Google to produce the glass and the price will depend on Google's strategy and the margin they want on this product. Electronic manufacturers are know to operate on relative thin margins around 1.5% (8% on an iPhone 5)As Google targets a mass market we can expect that the price won't be too excessive... at least we hope!

Check Catwig's website if you want to get more info on the inside of the device.