Snap Announces Major Changes to Snapchat and New AR Glasses

The tech company Snap announced a major redesign on its social media platform Snapchat, a new generation of its AR glasses Spectacles, a brand-new operating system, and new AI features during the Snap Partner Summit this Tuesday.

One of the major changes the company is making in the popular social media network is integrating multiple features and simplifying the home design.

“We’re now testing a new and simplified Snapchat that organizes the app around communicating with friends, using the camera, and watching Snaps from friends and the broader Snapchat community, including creators and publishers,” wrote the company in its press release.

The home screen design went from five tabs to three, and will show a “Simple Snapchat”, that opens to the camera, and has chats to the left, and both features, Spotlight and Stories, integrated to the right.

According to TechCrunch, this could help adoption from older generations who complained about difficulties in navigating the platform. The new redesign has begun to roll out in certain countries and to small groups of users.

Snap also introduced the fifth generation of Spectacles, powered by the company’s new operating system Snap OS, a 226 gram device equipped with four cameras and dual system-on-a-chip architecture.

“Spectacles also tint automatically based on your environment’s lighting so visuals are vibrant, indoors or outdoors – even in direct sunlight,” states the document shared by Snap with more details of the new technology.

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“For the first time in human history, we have made transition lenses cool,” joked Evan Spiegel, Snap CEO at the Snap Partner Summit, explaining the new tint function. The new devices have been developed in partnership with Qualcomm—which recently partnered with Samsung and Google to build smart glasses.

Snapchat will now include new AI features like Easy Lens to create new lenses for AR experiences within minutes, by just typing prompts, and new animations for creators in the Animation Library, as well as more opportunities to be discovered by new users in the platform through new Lenses.

The social media company expects to attract more creators and a larger audience with the new products and services.