A few days ago I saw this keynote being shared on my X feed but what seemed like an army of accounts. Pickle, the company that makes the device touts their Pickle 1 AR glasses as A Soul Computer.
The race to invent what will replace our phones has been going on for quite some time now. Over the past few years AI devices like the Humane AI pin and the Rabbit R1 launched to much fanfare but ended up falling short of expectations. I even had a Rabbit R1 on order but was able to cancel the order after watching some less than favorable reviews.
Even if they fail I applaud these companies for having the courage to think beyond convention. Each of these two devices got some things right and a lot of things wrong, which is the price to be paid for being early.
Being the first start-up to perfect the recipe for what will replace our mobile phones won’t be easy but it’s pretty clear at this point that a wearable will be the natural evolutionary trajectory of the form-factor of the mobile phone.
Pickle 1 seems to embrace AI in a completely different way and it’s intriguing. The cameras, microphones, and sensors on the glasses are constantly recording creating a “digital memory” of your life-experiences. These are stored online as “bubbles” that you can revisit any time you want. Pickle 1 also has proactive AI assistance which anticipates your needs, book rides, make reservations, or remind you of important things automatically. Pickle also promises a real-world battery life of 12 hours, which was one area where the Humane pin faltered.
One of my main concerns with this device is privacy. Pickle promises on-device encryption and no data retention for third-party training but before I’d be comfortable using these I’d have to be sure I understand and trust how my personal information would be handled. The memory “bubbles” will have to be stored on a cloud somewhere.
This is a very new launch and Pickle is still taking preorders. The price is set at $799 for early adopters and the company says it plans on increasing the price in the $1,300 range in Q2 2026 once the first few batches are shipped.
I, personally, am weary of buying a device that’s in this early stage of development. The only time I've had been happy with the decision to buy an early version of a product is the Matic robotic vacuum it's surpassed all expectations. I know plenty of fellow tech-geeks and YouTube influencers that’ll be eagerly standing in line with $800 to be among the first to try the Pickle 1.
The point of all this is with each iteration these AI devices are inching closer to something that will work in the real world. Which start-up will be the first to get it right? It might be Pickle or it could be a company we’ve never heard of yet.
I predict the breakthrough will happen this year, or 2027 at the latest. The fact of the matter is whichever start-up nails first it will be quickly be gobbled up by a big tech company like Apple or Google and the tech will be mass produced on a global level. After this, at long last, the burden of carrying a heavy rectangular piece of plastic, metal, and glass that has to be charged multiple times a day will be behind us.
Will the new devices be better? In some ways I think they will.
For one, I believe wearables will allow people to be more present in the world around them. Instead of staring at a screen the displays will be overlaid atop the real world that people will be forced to engage with. Wearables will likely become less of a social crutch in public settings than our glowing rectangles.
Maybe people will actually pay more attention to the world around them or even relearn the art of small-talk and start having interesting conversations with strangers again? Sigh, we can only hope but one thing is for sure the days of the smart phone are numbered.
All for now. Thanks so much for reading.
