Google Tango Offers Next-Gen Augmented Reality Smartphone Features

Augmented reality, along with virtual reality, is the next frontier of technological advancements for smartphones and the computer industry in general. Google’s Tango technology is one of the most promising innovations when it comes to AR, and it is now in Lenovo’s Phab 2 Pro smartphone.

Tango is basically an advanced camera with dimensional sensors, which enable it to measure distances and sizes of objects by simply looking at it. This makes it perfect for 3D-mapping, which is incredibly important in AR technology. It can help users do things like measure space for furniture or play an even more advanced version of Pokémon Go, CNET reports.

The great thing about the Phab 2 Pro is that it is not just a developer kit anymore, which can be quite basic in its features since it relies on developers to soup it up. It’s now a fully-functional, mid-grade product that also comes at a reasonable price of $499.

Since Lenovo’s phablet is the first real product to have the Tango onboard, it’s only natural that it would still have a few kinks in the system. The most noticeable of these is how shiny surfaces can throw off the 3D-mapping sensors, thus preventing AR objects from making an appearance.

Despite these flaws, however, it’s still a pretty solid offering that provides almost life-like features to digital objects placed over real objects. As for its likely effects on the smartphone industry, The Verge notes how the AR market has grown enough for Tango and the Phab 2 Pro to take hold.

The increasing interest around AR is largely thanks to the success of Niantic Labs’ Pokémon Go mobile app, which proved to be a worldwide phenomenon. This forced companies to realize that there is real money to be made in superimposing non-existent things on real things, such as super cute monsters.

Google is even thinking about applying Tango to other smartphones down the road. The Director of Product for Tango, Nikhil Chandhok says as much, confirming that next year will see many more manufacturers rocking the AR technology.