This Tuesday evening just got quite a bit more exciting for any folks that are lucky enough to own Google Glass, as the Android-powered headwear just began receiving a significant software update. Besides bumping Glass up to software version XE5, the update brings with it a more reliable estimation of the remaining battery charge, incoming notifications for Google+ and Hangouts, crash reporting and a required combo of a power source and Wi-Fi connection for background uploads. Here's the full XE5 changelog, as shared by Phandroid:

• Change to sync policy: require power + Wi-Fi for background uploads
• Crash reporting
• Incoming G+ notifications (direct shares, comments, +mentions), including ability to comment and +1
• Incoming Hangout notifications
• Transcription of queries & messages is now wicked-fast
• Long-press to search from anywhere in the UI (no longer just from off)
• International number dialing + SMS
• Hop animation on disallowed swipes in the UI
• New On-Head Detection calibration flow
• Show device Serial Number on Device Info card
• More reliable estimation of battery charge remaining
• New recipient-list mosaic

While Glass is currently only available to members of Google's Explorers program, it looks like those that do have some Glass of their own have a pretty hefty update headed their way. Google has previously said that it expects the public Glass launch to happen by the end of 2013, which gives El Goog plenty of time to continue pushing out updates and improving both Glass and its software. If you opted to join Google's Explorers group rather than wait around for that public launch, then get to plugging that Glass in and looking out for an update.

Via Phandroid