Meta Connect opens September 23 in Menlo Park. The company has not posted a start time. It has posted enough of an agenda to make the shape of the week obvious: glasses on Wednesday, developers on Thursday, headsets as a tease.
A Horizon OS firmware leak this week sketched Project Phoenix, an ultralight mixed-reality headset that looks more like Xreal’s Aura than like a Quest. The images show slim frames, nose pads instead of foam, and a cable consistent with a tethered puck. Internal timelines still point to a consumer launch in the first half of 2027. Connect will preview, not sell.
The product that might actually ship is Ray-Ban’s third generation. Reporting over the spring described two frames — a thicker sunglass with more battery and a lighter optical for prescriptions — on a faster Qualcomm part, with a Live AI mode that lasts hours instead of half of one. Camera quality is the quiet embarrassment of the current pair. The next one is supposed to stop looking like 2019.
Muse, Meta’s new agent, is scheduled to arrive on those glasses “soon.” If Connect makes that concrete, the company will have a face computer, a chat agent, and a social network asking to share a brain. That is either the consumer platform of 2027 or a privacy hearing with better hardware.
