Amazon updates Echo Frames to make it easier to send texts and make calls

From The Verge: Amazon’s Echo Frames, the Alexa-enabled eyeglasses equipped with tiny speakers and microphones, are getting updated with new quality-of-life features like the ability to automatically wake up from power-saving sleep mode when you put them on your face, and a shortcut to quickly phone a contact of your choosing.

The new features are rolling out on November 10th, the same day Amazon is releasing new gray and blue colors of the Echo Frames for $249.99 which. Along with the existing tortoiseshell frames, these new colors will be available with new lens options for polarized sunglass and blue-light filters for $269.99. These lens options launched earlier this year, but until now they’ve only been available with the black frame option.

Other new features include the ability to call a priority contact with a simple long-press of the Echo Frames’ touchpad and the ability to change the Frames’ wake word from “Alexa” to “Echo.” The glasses’ automatic volume feature is also being updated so that it adjusts throughout a listening session to overcome loud ambient noise, rather than just at the start. The glasses already automatically enter sleep mode when you turn them upside down, but now it’ll be easier to wake them up by simply putting them on your face.

Finally, the hands-free text messaging feature that’s already available on Android is expanding to iOS “in the coming months.”

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