Google’s new Android XR glasses are the most exciting tech I’ve seen in a decade

Let’s be honest with each other for a moment. For the past few years, a lot of new tech has felt a bit like a commodity. Smartphones get slightly faster, laptops get a bit thinner, tablets find new ways to be good-enough content machines. It’s all useful, it’s all iterative, but it’s also all just a bit boring these days, isn’t it? And it is increasingly rare to have that raw, jaw-on-the-floor, “this changes things” excitement. But yesterday at Google I/O 2025, I had one of those moments once again thanks to what Google showed off with Android XR and AI-powered smart glasses. This is, without a doubt, the most excited I’ve been about new tech in a decade.

Sure, smart glasses have been a bit of a “next big thing” for a while, with different attempts and some pretty notable failures. But what Google not only talked about, but fully demoed, feels different. It’s not just about strapping a screen to your face; it’s the profound potential of having persistent, real-time, heads-up information and an all-seeing, all-knowing Gemini assistant available with every glance. That concept becoming reality very soon, from a sheer tech perspective, is beyond wild to think about.

Imagine it for just a second: the constant need to pull out your phone to check a notification, look up a quick fact, get directions, or translate something – all of that friction could just disappear. Imagine walking down the street, and your glasses subtly display navigation arrows in your field of view. Or conversing with someone in another language and seeing live, translated subtitles appear as if by magic. Or looking at a landmark, a plant, or a product and simply asking Gemini, “What is that? Tell me more,” and getting an instant, context-aware answer.

This is the vision Google painted at I/O: Android XR as the foundation, Gemini as the ever-present intelligence, and stylish eyewear (thanks to partnerships with brands like Gentle Monster and Warby Parker) as the vehicle. The demos they showed – live translation, contextual information about your surroundings, seamless messaging – these aren’t just features; they introduce a fundamental shift in how we could interact with digital information and the physical world around us in the very near future.

Even the more controlled hands-on reports, like The Verge’s look at the current prototypes, offer tantalizing glimpses. The ability to take a photo and see an actual preview in the discreet in-lens display? That alone is a leap beyond current smart glasses and solves a real user problem. And while the public demos might have been “safe,” the mention of more advanced, personalized, and proactive AI experiences shown behind closed doors just fuels the imagination further.

Yes, there are still hurdles that any company making these glasses will need to think through. Battery life, social acceptance, ensuring privacy, making the tech truly seamless and not a distraction – these are all massive challenges Google and its partners will need to solve. And we’ve been here before with ambitious wearable tech that didn’t quite stick the landing.

But for the first time in what feels like a very long while, the concept and accompanying demos have me buzzing; and it’s not about a slightly better spec sheet or a new hinge design. It’s about a technology that could genuinely change our daily lives, augmenting our reality in ways that feel like science fiction, but are now demonstrably being used and tested.

While the polished consumer versions are not likely until at least 2026, the vision Google presented for its AI smart glasses at I/O 2025 is a powerful reminder of why I fell in love with technology in the first place. It’s ambitious, it’s a bit audacious, and it’s incredibly intriguing. And for now, that’s more exciting than any incremental update to a phone, laptop or tablet could hope to be. And I’m thrilled to see what’s next.