Google's Wear OS Watches Are Now Mere Companions to Smart Glasses

The next time you check your wrist, it may be because you asked your glasses to take a picture or order you a meal. Now that Google is getting in on smart glasses—sorry, I mean “intelligent eyewear”—the next version of your Android watch may one day become a secondary screen for your always-connected AI wearables. Google didn’t offer the barest ounce of context for its upcoming Wear OS 7 update at its I/O 2026 keynote. Instead, it provided a small snippet that explained a fair bit of how Google’s face-based devices compare to wearables like the Ray-Ban Meta. Google is currently working with smart glasses maker Xreal on Project Aura, a pair of glasses with an attached compute puck and a screen embedded in one of the lenses. These glasses are supposed to facilitate using Google’s Gemini AI on-device. Glasses without a screen will need a separate device to handle all the more complex tasks. Both Google and Samsung are working alongside established glasses brands Warby Parker and Gentle Monster on two separate pairs of “audio glasses,” named that way so they can be differentiated from Meta’s eyewear. Though just like the Ray-Bans, Google and Samsung still plan to make use of built-in c