A week after offering Glass to the masses in a one-day sale and bringing Android KitKat to its head-mounted gadget, Google on Monday announced the imminent arrival of another software update, bringing with it new functionality for its growing army of Explorers to get their teeth into.
The first of the two new features, set to land later this week, allows iPhone users to receive notifications of incoming text messages, a feature which owners of Android handsets have been able to make use of for some time.
To enable the feature, Explorers just need to jump into their iPhone’s Bluetooth settings and hit “show notifications” for their paired Glass. Once that’s done, all incoming messages will appear as notifications on the high-tech specs. Google adds, however, that “due to some limitations with iOS,” iPhone-owning Glass users will be unable to reply to messages directly from the wearable computing device.
Next up is a new Calendar Glassware feature that’ll let users view their schedule and appointments, while also allowing for title, time, date, and location modification. Users can dismiss an event from their timeline, too, or simply delete it.
With the recent upgrade of Glass to Android KitKat, the Mountain View company is promising “faster updates” for the $1500 device. Up to now such updates have been rolling out pretty much on a monthly basis.
In a bid to find out more about people’s experiences using Glass, the company last week boosted the number of Explorers on its books by launching a special one-day Glass sale for the public. Since starting the Explorer program over a year ago, Google’s been using feedback from users and developers to tweak the design of the gadget in preparation for its full-scale commercial release, which many expect to take place in the latter half of this year.
