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Google says 'all Glass spots claimed' after one day sale, as KitKat rolls out

Google reckons its Glass Explorer club has reached capacity after the company opened it up to the public for one day only, but it's staying mum on numbers.
Written by Liam Tung, Contributing Writer

The one day sale of Google Glass to the public has come to a close and, according to the company, all of the available headsets have been claimed.

"We're out of spots in the Explorer Program for now, but may have more to share soon," Google said on the Get Glass page, where anyone in the US was able to buy a Glass set yesterday. 

From an update the Glass team gave on Tuesday, it appears that the 'cotton white' edition did actually sell out during the sale. However, there was no word on how the other shades of Glass, which include sky, charcoal, shale, and tangerine, fared. Google hasn't said how many Glass sets were available during the sale in total, so it's difficult to say how much of a success the one-day event really was.

Would-be Explorers would have had to sign up yesterday by paying $1,500 plus tax for a Glass device, which has until now have only been available through invitation or winning a competition: for example, 8,000 people were able to get Glass via the #ifihadglass competition last year.

Yesterday's Glass newbies will receive their choice of shade or frame, a charger, a case, and a mono earbud. By the time the device ships to them, KitKat — or XE16 in Glass terms — will be available for the device too. The KitKat for Glass update was announced earlier this week and is the first update for the device since last December, when Google broke its previous monthly cycle of updates.

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Photo bundle feature in KitKat for Glass. Credit: Google

Google has since published the release notes, which fills out some of the missing details about the KitKat update, including that Google has killed off a feature called "song search". 

"Song search is a relatively new feature that saw little usage. We wouldn't be surprised to see it come back in someone's Glassware," Google notes. It also gave the chop to video calls via Glass too for similar reasons. 

KitKat also means Glass owners won't need to manually set up wi-fi. The device now connects to any wi-fi network that the Android device its coupled with has already been set-up with. Glass also offers more information about the network status if the device is lacking a connection, and Google has also introduced Google Music Instant Mixes.

Read more on Google Glass 

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