Journey Lens: Reviving Smart Glasses to Combat Digital Distractions

Journey Lens is reviving an old smart glasses idea to solve a modern problem

If there is a villain in the story of our distracted culture, it's not necessarily the smartphone - it's what lives inside of it. "Smartphones by themselves are not addictive, it's the incentive behind social media that tries to maximize attention that makes them addictive. When you are trying to access a simple thing on a smartphone, the interface is designed in such a way that it's easy to get sucked into doom scrolling," said Farbod Shakouri, Co-Founder & CEO at Phantom Technology when I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago. Shakouri and his company have a solution, and it harkens back to the OG wearable glasses: think Google Glass without the embarrassment and a lot more native artificial intelligence. Journey Lens, which goes on preorder today, weighs just 40 grams (Meta Ry-Ban Wayfarers, by contrast, weigh about 50g) and look like a fashionable pair of glasses or sunglasses. But they hide an information secret: a small micro-LED screen fed to the eye through a prism in the upper left or right of the frames. It's designed to deliver necessary information and app access but is actually focused more on keeping a helpful eye on you. In addition to the screen, Journey Lens includes a sensor in the nose bridge that can, sense distraction and attention. Shakouri claimed the frames can "monitor and guide your focus." Phantom is calling this feature 'Focus Compass', and it watches your daily routine and keeps track of when you become distracted. The frames include a single microphone (not far field, which might mean some issues with it hearing you outdoors) so you can ask the AI (powered by ChatGPT-4o with other LLMs to come) questions about what you see through the lens' 2K camera. You can also use the Journey Lens to life journal but in a more interactive and conversational way. Shakouri described a scenario in which you climb a mountain, and the Journey Lens AI asks you, unprompted, through its stereo speakers, "How was the climb?" You might tell the lens that the journey was tough, but it was worthwhile, and you want to remember it. The lenses would then automatically grab photos and a short video to make an album. As for how the lens knows what you are doing, it uses an onboard neural net to interpret images and then works with the companion app and large language model on your phone to deliver full understanding. Shakouri told me your data will never go to the cloud. Like Google Glass before it, Journey Lens doesn't try to augment your reality, Instead, the display prism is far from the center of either lens and you would need to glance up to the left or right (depending on where you have the prism) to view what will look like an iPad screen held at arm's length. Having used Google Glass for a time, I understand this interaction but I remember how it also felt less than natural. Hopefully, the glance on Journey Lens isn't too exaggerated and the visuals are clear enough for a quick glance. At least I know they'll be bright. Phantom claims the Journey Lens screen outputs up to 4,000 nits of brightness. Since the tiny display is housed in standard-looking smart glasses (available in multiple styles), perhaps no one will notice that little prism. It'll be nicely hidden on sunglasses. However, even on clear lenses (prescription or standard), the upper portion of the lens will be tinted to hide the screen technology. Journey Lens will arrive next year and should list for $195 / £150 (around AU$290), with pre-orders starting today. If that holds up, it's significantly cheaper than competing smart frames from Amazon (Echo Frames) and Meta. There is a catch, though. If you want access to the smart companion, Life Journal, and the full array of your onboard apps, you'll need to sign up for a monthly subscription fee that, depending on which services you choose, will range from $7 to $18 a month. With full AR-ready lenses expected this year from companies like Meta and next year from Google and Samsung, Phantom may have mistimed its, ahem, Journey. After all, its imaging technology is decidedly first-gen but also potentially less intrusive than what some of these next-gen AR/AI lenses will bring. Maybe the answer to distractibility is not to combine a technology overlay with your whole world but to keep the tech in its own corner and only let it peek its head out when you glance in its direction or call it by its name.

Phantom Technology's Smart Glasses Want to Help You Fight Distractions

UK-based Phantom Technology is planning to use smart glasses to reduce distractions. Its Journey Lens is a wearable device that aims to improve focus and keep users' eyes away from their phones while still providing the typical features of other smart glasses. The Journey Lens uses a biometric sensor on the bridge of the nose to record eye movement and analyze it in order to determine how focused the wearer is on whatever they're doing. The glasses can then guide the wearer's attention and offer advice on how to stay focused. Phantom Technology researched the technology for five years before going public with the Journey Lens, which it hopes will encourage users to avoid distractions and generally improve their state of mind. It's an ambitious concept, and a big claim to make for any wearable. Fortunately, it isn't the Journey Lens' only trick. While it claims to be able to improve focus, it also covers many features other smart glasses like the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses provide. There's stereo sound and a microphone for audio playback, calls, and interacting with the glasses' own AI assistant. It also has a 2K camera for taking photos and videos. The audio and video components combine to enable the Discovery Lens feature that lets the glasses guide and provide information about everything in your view. A monocular color OLED display is also built into the glasses, and seems to attempt to do what Google Glass promised long ago, showing useful information in an unobtrusive view. The transparent OLED's picture shows up in the corner of the user's vision and doesn't block their field of view. It isn't intended to play video or provide direct connectivity to another device like the Viture Pro XR, but it can show text and simple graphics to provide visual feedback to what is asked of the AI assistant and augment Discovery Lens features. The Journey Lens can function on its own with the Discovery Lens and AI assistant features, but a subscription is required to enable its other functions, including the aforementioned focus-enhancing features. The $7-per-month Standard subscription lets users connect up to three apps from their phone directly to the glasses. The $12-per-month Premium subscription adds the Focus Compass function that guides the user's focus, a Life Journal that prompts the user to narrate their experiences to get AI feedback, and the ability to connect an unlimited number of apps to the glasses. The $18-per-month Premium Pro subscription adds additional Deep Focus features, plus early access to anything new the glasses will be able to do with updates. Despite its ambitious features, the Journey Lens is built mostly from off-the-shelf components, according to Phantom, which keeps its price low (even if the subscriptions can add to that price). The Journey Lens will be available in early 2025 for $195 and supports prescription and tinted lenses.