Google Glass Teardown: A Look Inside

There's a lot of mystique surrounding Google Glass, but the high-tech specs just got a detailed teardown from a group of early adopters, revealing a deeper look at the inner workings of the device.

The team at Catwig.com has dissembled (and very impressively, reassembled) Google Glass, and even installed a pair of prescription lenses as an experiment. Alternative frames for Glass, which will accommodate prescription lenses, are reportedly in the works.

"The build quality is what you'd expect from a device that costs as much as a high-end laptop," the company noted on its website. "Everything fits together precisely, and has a solid feel and great surface finish."

To start, Catwig removed the titanium frame from the pod holding the technology. The touchpad on the side of Glass — which a user can touch to activate some functions — is a custom module created by Synaptics.

The tiny display, which is even smaller than a U.S. dime and has a resolution of 640 x 360, touts pixels that are one-eighth the physical width of those on the iPhone 5's retina display. The picture below shows just how small it is.

The weight of Google Glass is evenly distributed, but the battery lives in a rounded plastic casing behind the ear. Inside, Catwig discovered a single-cell lithium-polymer battery sitting at the end of the flexprint PCB. It is marked with a capacity of 2.1 Wh (about 570 mAh). A bone-conduction speaker, which doubles as a tactile switch, sits in front of the battery pod.

The dissection also revealed that the main logic board, which was glued to the thermal pad, includes the core chips powering Glass such as a TI OMAP4430, 16GB of SanDisk flash storage and an Elpida mobile DRAM chip.

Meanwhile, installing a pair of prescription lenses to the glasses was functional but "subpar" experience, according to Catwig, due to the head proximity sensor being unreliable when next to a lens.