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Google Glass may gain iOS direction, text message support soon

Like it or hate it, Google Glass has recently been discussed on a lot of tech blogs. Tim Stevens at our sister site Engadget has been trying out his Glass around the house and on hot motorcycles, and a lot of other tech bloggers shelled out $1,500 to get the developer version of the device. One big negative for Apple fans has been that currently, only Android users get support for navigation and SMS text messaging. Now, Frederic Lardinois at our other sister site TechCrunch has news that iOS support may be coming soon.

Lardinois was at the Google New York office yesterday picking up his own Glass and was told that turn-by-turn directions and SMS will soon be possible "independent of the device the user has paired it to." Right now, Glass will happily pair with your iPhone to get online (Glass doesn't contain its own cellular radio), but the higher functions need a Glass companion app running on an Android phone.

Glass not only requires a mobile phone for connectivity while on the go, but location information as well. As Lardinois notes, "Glass is just another device that uses your phone's personal hotspot feature. This means Glass shouldn't have to depend on any application that runs on your phone, so the original restriction of making navigation and SMS dependent on the companion app was always a bit odd."

The general public will most likely have to wait at least a year for widespread availability of Glass, so it's comforting to know that our Borg implant high-tech eyewear should work happily with iOS by that point.