For more than a decade, the glow of a phone screen has ruled everyday life, from the alarm on the nightstand to the last scroll before sleep.
Now Mark Zuckerberg says that era is already fading. He has repeated that “within 10 years, many people will no longer carry their phones, they will use their glasses for everything,” pointing to afuture where smart eyewear replaces the smartphone as our main device.
At Meta Connect 2025, his company Meta unveiled the Meta Ray-Ban Display, its first pair of smart glasses with a built-in micro display inside the right lens.
The glasses can show messages, maps, live translation and captions in front of your eyes while you keep looking at the real world around you. The starter bundle, which includes the matching Neural Band wrist device, went on sale in the United States for $799.
Augmented reality display features for daily use
So what do these glasses actually do that your phone cannot? Instead of pulling a slab of glass from your pocket in the middle of a conversation, you can glance at a small floating window that only you can see.
Meta says the in-lens display is sharp enough to read text and bright enough for daylight, and it can quietly surface WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram notifications, along with step-by-step navigation or a live teleprompter style feed.
Control is handled through the Meta Neural Band, a wristband packed with electromyography sensors that read tiny muscle signals in your hand. A pinch of the fingers or a subtle wrist twist can scroll, select or pause content, all without tapping the frame or speaking out loud in a quiet office or crowded subway car.
Meta describes this band as a core piece of its wearable ecosystem, designed so that quick tasks no longer require fishing for a phone.
Personal superintelligence and the future of AI wearables
Zuckerberg argues that phones have reached a plateau. In several interviews he has called them “small” gadgets that “distract you and pull you away from in person interactions,” and he now describes smart glasses as the “ideal format for personal superintelligence” because they can see, hear and talk to the wearer all day while an AI system quietly helps in the background.
He has even warned that people who skip AI glasses could face a “cognitive disadvantage” compared with those who adopt them.
Early sales suggest plenty of curiosity. Meta’s previous Ray-Ban smart glasses already saw strong demand, and the new display model has waitlists long enough that international expansion to Europe and Canada was recently delayed so US orders can be filled first.
For now, though, the glasses still lean on a paired phone for connectivity and many apps, which makes them more companion than full replacement.
Privacy concerns around camera glasses and AI data
There are also familiar worries riding along with the excitement. Privacy researchers note that camera equipped glasses can record people who may not realize they are on video, and that data can feed powerful AI systems in the cloud.
Regulators in Europe and elsewhere are watching closely, and social norms around wearing always-on cameras in classrooms, offices and cafes are still very much in flux.
At the end of the day, the Meta Ray-Ban Display looks less like the sudden death of the smartphone and more like the next step in a slow shift away from permanent phone-in-hand behavior. Your handset still pays the bills and calls the ride home, but the direction of travel is clear enough.
The official press release was published by Meta.
