Mark Zuckerberg has begun his quest to kill the smartphone

Smart glasses with texting capabilities that don't interrupt conversations? That's what Mark Zuckerberg unveiled at Meta Connect 2025, positioning the new Meta Ray-Ban Display as a solution to smartphone addiction.

"The promise of glasses is to preserve this sense of presence that you have with other people," Zuckerberg explained. "I think that we've lost it a little bit with phones, and we have the opportunity to get it back with glasses."

The glasses feature cameras, speakers, microphones, and a display offset to avoid blocking vision. But what makes them revolutionary is the Meta Neural Band wristband, which uses surface electromyography to detect signals between brain and hand during gestures.

Demonstrating the technology, Zuckerberg "wrote" text messages by mimicking pen movements with his fingers. "I'm up to about 30 words a minute on this," he claimed, approaching typical smartphone texting speeds.

This $70 billion investment represents Meta's biggest gamble yet, potentially bigger than its metaverse efforts. The company is betting consumers will trade smartphones for wearable tech that, as Zuckerberg puts it, "gets out of the way" of human connection.