The first launch of any app is the most honest conversation it will have with you: it asks for access, and you usually tap "Allow" on reflex. For glasses you wear on your face all day, it's worth pausing for a moment. The good news up front — the list is short, and the thing most people dread isn't on it at all.
Short answer: Only Bluetooth is non-negotiable — without it your phone simply can't find or pair the glasses. Everything else is bound to a feature: microphone for translation and QuickNote, location for navigation, notification access to mirror alerts. If you don't use one of those features, you can refuse the matching permission with no downside. And because the Even G2 has no camera, there is no camera permission that could let the glasses "see" your surroundings at all.
The one permission you can't negotiate
Bluetooth is the bottleneck. The glasses are a camera-free display with no SIM of their own; all their thinking happens on the paired phone. Refuse Bluetooth access and the app has no route to the glasses — nothing pairs, nothing runs. This isn't data harvesting; it's simply the channel the glasses exist through at all. So this one you keep.
On newer Android versions this grant is often labelled "Nearby devices" and is decoupled from location. On older Android builds, scanning for Bluetooth devices was tied to the location permission by the system itself — a behaviour of the Android platform, not a quirk of this app. What your device asks for exactly, you'll see when you install it; that's the honest test anyway.
Permission by permission
Here's how the usual prompts sort out. "Keep" means it's needed for the core pairing. "Optional" means it only matters if you use the feature in question — otherwise, safely off.
| Permission | Why the app asks | Your call |
|---|---|---|
| Bluetooth / Nearby devices | Find, pair and exchange data with the glasses | Keep — mandatory |
| Microphone | Live translation and voice capture for QuickNote | Optional — these features only |
| Location | Turn-by-turn navigation cues | Optional — navigation only |
| Notification access | Mirror phone alerts to the lenses | Optional — notifications only |
| Camera | — | Not needed — camera-free |
Feature-to-permission mapping is an editorial reading by AI-Eyewear based on how the functions work, not a verbatim copy of a permission manifest. Exactly which dialogs appear depends on your OS and app version.
Why "camera-free" is a real argument here
The biggest reservation people have about smart glasses is: "Is the thing quietly recording me?" With the Even G2 that question falls away, at the hardware level. There is no camera fitted — so there is no camera permission that could let the glasses capture your surroundings. If the app ever wants photo access, it would be for app-side incidentals like a profile picture, not the glasses' eyes. That's a distinction worth not glossing over: on camera-equipped models this exact grant is the touchiest point; here it doesn't exist to begin with.
Microphone and location: the two you actually think about
The microphone is understandably the permission that raises the most questions. It's needed for live translation and for QuickNote's voice capture — without a microphone, neither can do its job. If you use neither translation nor voice notes, simply leave it off; the glasses remain fully useful as a display for notifications and the teleprompter. Do keep in mind that translation is cloud-based per Even, so the captured audio leaves the device for processing. How that data handling works in general is what the privacy page is for; here we're only concerned with the grant itself.
Location serves navigation — the turn cues that appear in front of your eye. No need for navigation? Then off. Many systems now offer "only while using the app" as a middle path rather than "always"; that's the leaner choice if you do want the feature occasionally.
Review your own permissions any time
None of this is set in stone. You can revoke any grant after the fact and test the effect immediately — that's how you stay in control, rather than leaning on a single reflex decision made at install time.
- Open system settings and go to the Even app (under "Apps", or straight from the app icon).
- Open "Permissions" and walk the list — Bluetooth/Nearby devices, Microphone, Location, Notifications.
- Turn off what you don't use — anything tied to a feature you never touch can be switched off.
- Test the affected feature and check whether anything's missing; if nothing is, the grant was surplus to you anyway.
- Switch it back on if needed — nothing is final, every grant can be restored.
Our stance: grant permissions along your actual usage, not just in case. Bluetooth has to stay; everything else is a switch you flip when you genuinely want the feature. Fewer grants means fewer data paths — and on a camera-free pair, the biggest one is already closed.
So: buy, skip, or test first?
Buy without worry if a clean, feature-bound permission set matters to you. That's exactly what you get: one mandatory grant and a handful of optional ones, plus the reassuring gap where a camera would otherwise sit.
Pause if even the microphone for translation is a deal-breaker — then cloud translation drops out for you, and part of the appeal with it. Honest is honest.
Test first for what a spec sheet can't show: which dialogs your specific device throws up. Install the app in the Zürich showroom and watch it live; the specs across every model are in the AI glasses database, and the big picture on data handling is on the privacy page.
Disclosure: AI-Eyewear is the authorised Swiss reseller of Even Realities. We name the permissions as plainly as we can — better one switch over-explained than one left unclear.