Electrochromic

If you're bursting in and out of shadowy forests, the slow reaction time of photochromic glasses just can't keep up. That's where Uvex's Variotronic glasses come in, which change tint in just a tenth of a second. We recently tried a pair out.

In less than a year, electrochromic sunglasses have gone from being experimental to an actual product, with Ctrl announcing its Ctrl One cycling glasses just this month. Should you prefer multi-use electronically-tinting sunglasses, however, you might want to get yourself a pair of Skugga shades.

Glasses with transitional lenses are a neat idea in theory, but they have some shortcomings in practice. That's why researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing an alternative – clear eyeglasses that can be manually tinted into sunglasses, by the user.

As the mechanical iris lens in a normal camera is far too large and bulky to incorporate in smartphones and other compact mobile devices, a team of researchers has developed a non-mechanical, "smart glass" iris that may bring much greater image quality to future smartphones.

A color-changing film could provide a new and better method of obtaining fingerprints from metal surfaces.

The lounges and lobbies of San Francisco's W Hotel have taken a turn for the futuristic, incorporating variable tint "dynamic glass" courtesy of California-based start-up View.