Snapchat Spectacles are one of the gadgets of the decade – why are they being snubbed?
So, chances are you’ve probably seen a fair few of the obligatory “gadgets of the decade” lists carted out by tech publications the world over.
The general consensus seems to be iPhone 4, PlayStation 4, Go Pro and Amazon Echo kind of hover around the top, with small variations here and there to account for the writer’s personal preference (e.g. Sennheiser Momentum 3 Wireless vs B&O H9i seems to be a big splitting point when it comes to adding a pair of headphones to this list).
But there’s something missing from this mix... Something that defined a smelted the worlds of gadgetry and fashion into one product that was a huge social talking point for well over a year.
I’m talking (as you may have guessed from the title) about Spectacles by Snapchat.
Yep, those sunglasses-come-video camera hybrid that were only available via vending machine for the first year or so.
Could they have done things better? Absolutely.
They could have struck harder when the iron was hot – capitalising on the huge global demand and dropping more than one vending machine (mostly in America) at a time.
They could have made them work better separately of Snapchat from day one – recording the wide screen/square video that they’ve recently updated them to do rather than just having people stuck to the circular format.
They could have offered a wider variety of styles from the get-go (I’m always more of a wayfarer man myself).
But they didn’t, and a degree of stagnancy in building the future generations of this product have led to Spectacles fading somewhat into obscurity...
In spite of all of that, though – in spite of all the usability obstacles they placed in front of you, they still exploded with hype (metaphorically, not literally). They still became one of the biggest tech talking points of this decade, by taking the big idea of wearable computing and making it accessible to the everyday folk (unlike Google Glass).
And for all of that, I think they should be considered a gadget of the decade.
...Don’t agree? Allow me to put it a different, more personal way to me. Drink the following image in – I looked ridiculous in Spectacles and my friends made damn sure I knew about it. But I still wear them to this day.
They told me it would be a bad idea to go spend $130 dollars (worked out roughly £117 in 2017 money) on a pair while I was out at CES in Vegas But yet I still joined the rat race down the strip towards the T-Mobile Arena (75% taxi, 25% sprinting), just to go queue outside a vending machine for the chance to buy a pair.
If picks for gadgets of the decade are based on their impact as well as their technological capability (which I do agree with a lot of you putting the iPhone 4 atop that list for those two reasons), then surely these should be on there too? Not as a number 1, but in the top 10 for sure.
They may not have stood the test of time, but they did have a hand in defining wearables and physical marketing for part of this decade.
