Geo Week News

January 4, 2017

ASUS has a Google Tango phone that does VR, too

asus-tango
@evleaks

It’s that time of year again: the Consumer Electronics Show has begun in Las Vegas. The hype machine has been warming up for months, so it’s no surprise that some news about futuristic technologies are going to leak out ahead of time. And that’s exactly what happened with ASUS’ new Google Tango phone, the ZenFoneAR.

It wasn’t supposed to be announced until later today, but chip-manufacturer Qualcomm published a premature blog post about the second-ever Google Tango phone.

The ZenFone AR is built on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821. More importantly, it enables both AR and VR. It comes loaded with Google’s Tango technology for augmented reality applications, and Google’s Daydream technology for virtual reality. It also looks to be, well, less ridiculously huge than the Phab2 Pro.

Whether phone-based AR technology like Tango is actually ready for prime time still remains to be seen. Early reviews of the previous Google Tango phone, Lenovo’s Phab2 pro, said the technology is impressive but more like a proof of concept than a final consumer product.

“Tango still isn’t fully realized,” said The Verge. “It’s glitchy: apps sometimes freeze up or crash, and a few of its most promising apps are also the least intuitive. And there still aren’t that many apps to use with it. But when it works, it’s fun. It’s at least one step beyond a gimmick, and it’s easy to see how it could enhance the whole mobile experience if it comes to more phones.”

SPAR 3D will be keeping up on the 3D technology news out of CES, so stay tuned for more.

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