BBC, WSJ, Business Insider, Snap: Snapchat launches its first hardware product, a camera equipped sunglasses named Spectacles. Simultaneously the company changes its name to Snap to reflect that its activity expands beyond the smartphone application. Now, Snap home page says:
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel wearing Spectacles
Spectacles’ camera uses a 115-degree lens, said to be much closer to the eyes’ natural field of view. On a tap on the button near the hinge, it records up to 10 sec of video from your first-person vantage (30 sec, according to BBC). Each new tap records another clip. Spectacles will be available this fall for $130.
One of the differentiators of the Spectacles camera is the round format of its video output. The rectangular format is said to be the one of the past when photos were made to print on paper. Now, they are used in a different way:
