Still not sold on smartwatches, but want to know what's going on with your phone without taking it out of your pocket? Maybe Matilde's Fun-iki glasses, spotted at CNET Japan's Live 2014 event, will do the trick. Connecting to smartphones through WiFi, a trio of LEDs above each lens will glow (or pulse) when there's a notification, or simply to add a little, er, color to your complexion. The lights cycle through various shades of red, green and blue, and you're able to assign specific colors to specific notifications: these frames aren't limited to just phone calls and email pings and adding further third-party apps' notifications is apparently easy.
There's speakers within the arms, while it charges through the micro-USB port on the left side -- we're told it'll typically blink and glow for around two days. It's a pretty simple pair of glasses: notifications are pretty much it -- there's no interactive component or camera within the hardware itself, but you can setup the notifications, color cycles and pulse rates through a companion app. There's also three different light-up modes: 'disco' and 'party' make the LEDs go a little crazy (just think of the Tinder applications), while 'relax' mode takes gentler hues and fades them in and out. Oh and there's a morse code mode, where you can flash out a specified message. Because anachronisms.
James Potter