Product1 publisher2 min readPublished
Samsung and Google put a camera in every Android XR style as Meta patches another LED loophole
9to5Google's Ben Schoon says misuse of the Ray-Ban camera, and Meta's slow response to it, has put him off wearing smart glasses at all. Samsung and Google are close to shipping their own, cameras included.
The Product Desk · Product desk
What happened
- Ben Schoon of 9to5Google wrote that the camera was what sold him on Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, and that he has barely touched the pair over the past year.
- The first Android XR glasses from Samsung and Google are close to debut with a camera in every style, and Samsung has said protections against camera tampering are in place immediately.
- L'atitude's 52 degrees N Berlin glasses were pitched on having a better camera than Meta's, and Schoon found focus and direct sunlight to be clear issues while liking the landscape capture.
- Schoon points to leaks of human moderators viewing uncensored private recordings, plus rumblings of Meta plans for facial recognition and always-on recording, as what drained trust.
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Why it matters
- constraint A bystander's only check is a light they cannot verify, so the wearer of any brand ends up answering for the hardware in the moment, without a way to prove the camera is off.
- decision Anyone shipping face-worn hardware now picks between a camera that inherits the Ray-Ban stigma and a camera-free pair that drops the capture use case buyers say they came for.
- precedent Samsung claiming tamper protections at launch sets the floor for what the next entrant has to promise, and puts the burden on marketing to reach people who never read a spec sheet.
The privacy light is the only part of camera glasses a stranger is asked to read. Ben Schoon's column for 9to5Google's Weekender newsletter dates the workarounds for switching it off back the better part of two years, with Meta shipping a fix in July [1][6]. Another loophole, which Schoon calls more obvious, is being patched only now [7]. Nobody standing next to a wearer can inspect firmware, so across that whole period the light could not tell them whether the camera was running [16].
He wrote that the camera "just feels wrong now" [4], and, on Meta's handling of the misuse, "thanks Meta, you've ruined this for everyone else" [5]. The column does not include usage or retention numbers; it is one reviewer's account of one year [17].
Schoon describes the stigma as widely known and loud, and sensor quality leaves it exactly where it is [13]. The buyer for these glasses is someone who wants hands-free point-of-view capture, and the person who decides whether they are socially usable is a stranger who bought nothing [2][13]. Samsung's answer is protections against camera tampering from the start. Schoon's reply to that is "not everyone is going to know that" [12].
The first test is whether a person standing next to the wearer can tell the camera is recording without asking the wearer. The second is whether the wearer can switch that signal off, for money or with a modification. Where the signal can be switched off, the indicator is decoration, and the Ray-Ban timeline shows how long a fix can take after the workaround is public [6][7].
In my view the shippable version ties the indicator to the sensor in hardware, so that no firmware change and no third-party service can separate them. The tradeoff is a higher bill of materials plus an indicator the industrial designers cannot hide. The other route drops the camera. Schoon's time with the camera-free Even Realities glasses shows what that costs: he kept missing an on-board camera and a speaker for capturing what was around him and for AI features [14]. The display-led version of smart glasses is the hardest thing to build with today's hardware, and audio glasses became the more popular product [15].
What to watch
- Whether the second Ray-Ban LED loophole Meta is patching now stays closed once resale and modification channels catch up.
- Whether Samsung and Google make the Android XR recording indicator tamper-evident in hardware, and say so at launch.
- Whether camera-free makers add cameras to chase the capture use case Schoon says he missed.