Last week Thursday at Lenovo’s Tech
World conference the world’s first Tango-enabled smartphone named Phab 2 Pro was
announced. The Lenovo Phab 2 Pro enabled augmented reality (AR) experiences,
and it uses set of sensors and software to discover its surroundings. It
is priced at $499 and will be sold globally in September globally.
what Tango Tango is all about
Project Tango is Google’s technology
that makes mobile devices like tablets, smartphones know what’s around them
just like humans. There are few Tango-enabled apps the Google Play Store, but
they work on the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro.
At CES 2016, Lenovo and Google announced
that they have been working together on a Project Tango smartphone. Google
Project Tango Product lead Johnny Lee showcased how the device can be used to
accurately measure space, area, and even play an AR version of the Jenga game. Google
is also working with app developers to create more of these special apps for
Project Tango devices.
Specification of Phab 2
Pro?
Phab 2 Pro has a metal unibody
design, and with the thickness of 8.9mm. It has a 6.4-inch QHD (2,560 x 1,440)
display, and is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor (Tango
edition) with 4GB RAM and 64GB storage space.
Phab 2 Pro comes with a 16 megapixel
rear camera on board with a special depth-sensing unit, along
with multiple camera sensors, that which power the augmented reality (AR)
experience.
There is a fingerprint scanner at
the back of Phab 2 Pro, a power house of 4,050 mAh, and 2.4 Turbo charging
support. We have the color option of gold and grey.
How Lenovo Phab 2 Pro work with TangoTango
There are a variety of sensors that Lenovo
Phab 2 Pro uses to detect physical motion and space. Allowing users to interact with their
surroundings thereby visualizing the contours of rooms, and thus map building
interiors.The smartphone primarily relies on three technologies to do this:
motion tracking, depth perception and area learning.
According to Lenovo’s press
statement, “Motion tracking lets PHAB2 Pro’s ‘eye’ see its own location in
3D. Area learning tells the smartphone its location. Depth perception lets the
device analyze the shape of the world around it by detecting surfaces and
obstacles.”
The real world uses for
a Lenovo Phab 2 Pro?
For starters, there’s a Home
Improvement by Lowe’s, which will let users choose an item they wish to buy,
and see whether it fits or looks good in the space of their home. Users can
pick any piece of furniture on the app, view it through their phone. Relying on
the sensors in the phone, the app will let you determine whether the table you
are planning will actually fit in the space of your home or not.
Raise App is another game by
Iguanabee, where users can pick a pet from the 3D library and then ‘raise’ it
as a pet.
Woorld App is for a learning
experience, where users create a miniature virtual world inside their own
home. Lenovo also says that students can place true-to-scale virtual dinosaurs
in their classrooms via the device.
What AR experience
mean
A commercially-ready Tango-enabled smartphone
is an amazing deal. It broadens what users can do with a phone. Smartphones
with real-life 3D projections, that track motion, figure out the actual space,
will drastically change the way we view these devices. Lenovo Phab 2 Pro could
well take smartphone computing into the next era.
Big thanks to Google and Lenovo for bringing
us this Tango powered smartphone, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro. Let’s wait till September
when it’s going out in the market