Hololens teardown: What's inside Microsoft's headgear

Microsoft’s Hololens has managed to woo tech enthusiasts, and the extremely long queue just to check out the holographic headgear at Build 2016 will vouch for it. While we’ve seen the attractive design and nifty features, Microsoft has now decided to give us a glimpse of how it looks from the inside. To begin with, Hololens doesn’t need to be connected, be it wired or wireless, with any other system.“It’s a Windows 10 PC that sits on your head,” points out TheVerge. It is said to be a combination of see-through lenses, sensors and some processing that is needed to gauge user’s gaze, voice and also the surroundings. The report calls the depth sensing front-camera, a miniature version of the Kinect camera, one of the highlights of the device. It looks like a regular camera from the outside, but requires just one-tenth the power, adds the report. It works with two other cameras that are meant for understanding the environment around you. There’s a camera to record what you see too. Another highlight is the HoloLens optics system which includes see-through holographic lenses to beam holograms into your eyes. But the news site calls the motherboard, the most impressive part. Unlike a powerful gaming PC or even your average laptop, it’s tiny and uniquely shaped for the HoloLens. I was surprised at just how small it is," the report adds. This tiny chip accommodates a 32bit Intel-based CPU, GPU, flash memory, RAM, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips. The report also points out a new chip known as holographic processing unit (HPU). To power up all these sensors, there’s battery power (looking like batteries found inside a toy) which includes a bunch of them at the rear, three batteries for each side, but there is no clarity on the capacity. Finally, it talks about the spatial sound in the form of two speakers positioned just above your ears.