Google Glass hits the FCC with Bluetooth 4 LE (which stock Android doesn't support yet)

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Google Glass hits the FCC with Bluetooth 4 LE (which stock Android doesn't support yet)
Before you get too excited, while there is a new filing in the FCC for Google Glass, this is undoubtedly the Google Glass Explorer edition, not the final consumer model. The Explorer Edition of Google Glass is the model designed for developers and super-early adopters who shelled out the $1500 at last year's Google I/O to get a pre-release version of the hardware. Still, this model should give us a peek into what to expect with the final model, including Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (BLE), which is interesting because stock Google doesn't support BLE yet.

Back in November, an Android software engineer at Google, Matthew Xie, confirmed that stock Android does not yet support BLE, but that it "will be the next major feature we are going to add." Some manufacturers like Motorola have added support for BLE to devices, but those depend on new libraries added. So, we're wondering how this was handled at the recent hackathon held for Google Glass. Attendees may have gotten to see more than Google Glass, and may have gotten a peek at the next major upgrade of Android

The WiFi connection in Glass is hard to pinpoint in the filings because one filing mentions 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n WiFi, but another only lists 802.11 b/g WiFi. Though, it seems far more likely that there will be 802.11n support. Another interesting note is that the device is listed as having a "vibrating element" that will provide audio to the user "via contact with the user's head." That sounds quite a lot like bone-conduction sound to us. 

source: FCC via The Verge

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