You set the phone on the charger by the front door and carry a basket of laundry two floors down to the cellar. The glasses are still on your face — but somewhere between the stairwell and the washing machine they go quiet. No more notifications, no translation. That is exactly what happens once the phone is out of range, and it is not a fault.
Short answer: When the Even G2 loses its Bluetooth link to the phone — because the phone is too far away, or left behind entirely — all the live, connected features stop: notifications, live translation, navigation cues and AI prompts every one of them lean on the phone. What can remain is only whatever is already sitting on the glasses themselves, such as a teleprompter script you loaded before you walked off. The glasses are a phone accessory, not a standalone computer.
Why the glasses can do so little alone
It helps to see the Even G2 for what it is: a camera-free display tethered to your phone over Bluetooth. The computing, the data connection, the account, the maps, the translation cloud all of that lives in the phone, not in the glasses. The lenses show what the phone sends them. Break the radio link between the two and it is like pulling the cable out of a monitor: the panel is still there, but nothing is arriving.
Bluetooth Low Energy reaches roughly ten metres in practice, and much less through walls and floors — so a single concrete floor between you and the phone is enough. This is not a weakness peculiar to these glasses; it is the architecture of every phone-tethered wearable.
In range versus out of range
Here is how behaviour shifts when the phone is within Bluetooth reach and when it isn't. "May remain" means only if the content was already on the glasses before the link dropped — best to test that yourself.
| Feature | Phone in range | Phone out of range |
|---|---|---|
| Notifications (calls, messages, calendar) | Shown | Stops |
| Live translation | With internet | Stops |
| Navigation cues | Works | Stops |
| Ambient AI prompts | With internet | Stops |
| Teleprompter (script loaded beforehand) | Works | May remain |
| Time / basic display | Shown | May remain |
The two "may remain" rows are our honest read, not a manufacturer guarantee: what still appears without the phone depends on what was already on the glasses. Test your own case in the showroom.
What actually stays on the glasses
Honestly, not a lot — and we would rather under-promise than over-promise here. Anything that streams from the phone in real time disappears with the link. What can stay is content the glasses have already received and held onto; the classic example is a teleprompter script you prepared in the app and pushed to the glasses before you left the room. Don't lean on it blindly, though: whether, and for how long, something remains visible without the phone is worth trying with your own workflow at the Zürich showroom rather than discovering in the moment that matters.
This is not the same as "no internet"
These two situations get mixed up constantly, yet they are fundamentally different. This article is about the phone itself being gone — the Bluetooth bridge is broken, so even relaying notifications stops. A separate case is when the phone is in your pocket but simply has no internet: there, the Bluetooth link holds, notifications and downloaded content keep working, and only cloud features like live translation pause. In short, no phone is a harder limit than no signal.
Who this actually matters for
For most people, rarely — the phone is almost always on you. It becomes relevant in exactly the moments you deliberately put it down: the phone charging at your desk while you walk to the meeting room down the corridor; sitting in a locker while you train; left on the kitchen table while you take the dog around the block. Anyone expecting a "leave the phone in a drawer" device will be disappointed. Anyone who understands it as an elegant second display for a phone that is nearby gets precisely that.
So: buy, skip, or test first?
Buy if you are clear that the G2 is a companion to your phone and you value pulling information into your line of sight while the phone sits in a pocket or on a table. That is the everyday it is built for.
Skip if you were hoping for a standalone wearable that keeps running across the flat with no phone in reach. The Even G2 is not that, and no update turns it into that.
Test first is especially telling here: pair a pair in the showroom, put the demo phone down and walk a few steps away — you will see, live, what goes silent and what stays. If you want to compare the models on paper first, the AI glasses database helps; if translation on the move is your main reason, read the translation-glasses overview; and if you are still placing the whole category, start with the what-are-AI-glasses explainer.
Disclosure: AI-Eyewear is the authorised Swiss reseller of Even Realities. We would rather tell you where the limit is up front than let you find it in the cellar.