When it comes to augmented reality, there’s only been on real player, as far as consumer products go, and that’s Microsoft, who’s HoloLens we’ve seen time and again in developer videos. However, there has been one other company which has been hard at work when it comes to augmented reality technology for consumers and that’s Google, whose Project Tango – their augmented reality project – we’ve been hearing snippets on for a long time.
However, the long wait is finally over as Lenovo is finally retailing the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, five months after its reveal back in June. It’s currently sitting with a price tag of $499 on Lenovo’s website. For that amount of money, you get the following in terms of specifications: a 6.4-inch 1440 x 2560 display, 4GB of RAM, a 16MP camera, a fingerprint scanner and a metal body. However, when it comes to performance, it just packs a Snapdragon 652 processor.
But the real pull of the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro is, of course, Tango.
The phone has depth and motion-sensing cameras, along with area learning abilities. This allows the Phab 2 Pro to map out 3D spaces and be aware of its position in them, letting you walk around and still observe augmented reality experiences.
However, the phones AR experiences are still limited to apps, of which there are only a few. Thankfully, of the few built for AR, they’re quite interesting. For instance, there’s an app that you can utilise to measure distances and objects by merely pointing your phone’s sensors at them. Games are a big part of the Project Tango experience, with board games like dominoes already being built as apps.
The Phab 2 Pro is an experiment of sorts between Lenovo and Google, with the former admitting that it will see a niche market and that future Tango devices will be smaller in size.
