Xreal introduced the Aura, a pair of wired smart glasses running Google's Android XR software, at the Android Developer Summit on Wednesday, TechCrunch reported¹.

The glasses rely on Qualcomm's Snapdragon Reality Elite platform and are tethered to a smartphone-like device for processing instead of doing all computing on the frames¹. Content is shown in the wearer's field of view¹.

Xreal is a Google smart-glasses partner¹. At launch, Aura is described as supporting many Google Play apps and games plus XR-specific titles, including an NBA app for Android XR, Nevatars, Fallout: Factions, Project Hail Mary: Journey Among the Stars, a NASCAR XR app, and the San Francisco Ballet Company's The Nutcracker¹.

Orders opened Wednesday in the United States, Canada, Japan and South Korea, according to the report¹. A 12GB plus 256GB configuration is listed at $1,279, with a limited launch price of $1,099 through December¹. A 16GB plus 512GB configuration is listed at $1,499, with a launch price of $1,299 through December¹. The company said shipping would start by mid-November¹.

In May, Xreal chief executive Chi Xu told TechCrunch that building a smart-glass business is difficult and that companies in the category have been losing money¹. He said Aura would cover a wide range of uses and that hardware, software and design had reached a point where scale was possible¹. Independent confirmation of demand, battery life, weight and display quality was not in the report¹.