Cheaper, Sportier Google Glass Competitor Is Now Available For Pre-Order

Recon Jet Hardware Recon

  

With all the hubbub about Google Glass, it's easy to miss all the other companies that are also taking advantage of the availability and power of tiny smartphone components for head-up displays. One of the most promising of those is the Recon Jet, and it just went up for pre-order today.
The Recon Jet comes from a small Vancouver-based company best known for ski tech, including a pair of goggles with a head-up display. The Jet follows in that path, focusing on sports rather than multi-purpose walking-around tech like Google Glass, but instead of winter sports, the Jet is best during the warm months. It looks sort of like a pair of Oakleys, with the display jutting out on the bottom right of the user's field of vision rather than the top left like Google Glass.

Recon Jet: What You See:  Recon

 

While it uses a mutant form of Android (as does Glass), the Recon Jet isn't quite as open as Glass, nor is it trying to be. Google Glass needs developers to create its reason for being; the Recon Jet's is built in. It'll launch with information for cyclists and triathletes first, showing heart rate, speed, distance travelled, and other vital stats. It also works as a notification tool for your phone, with which it'll sync, showing phone calls and text messages and things like that. You can also connect it with Facebook and Twitter to boast about the fact that you're even considering doing a triathlon.
The SDK will come later; though Recon is developing apps itself for the device, they still want other developers to jump in and add stuff.
You can pre-order it now for $500, which is about a third the price of Google Glass. It's also cheaper than the $600 the Jet is expected to cost at launch this December, if you want to save a hundred bucks as an early adopter. Read more about it here.