Tango has quite become an echo about to fade. What’s more exciting? Something came up to the surface – the Lenovo Phab2 Pro.
Lenovo seemingly found Google’s Tango as too brilliant a project to let it fritter away. So, Lenovo worked on a slightly-similar concept and showcased another wonder in the world of technology. Now, Lenovo’s newest Phab2 Pro is not only the first ever Lenovo-branded phone to be sold and purchased in the US, but is also the first Project Tango Smartphone in the world.
Breaking such immense ground in the world of tech, Lenovo Phab2 Pro continues to receive positive acclaims. However, as any other innovation, it also receives critical reviews from critics. This revolving scenario gets people wondering, “Just how worthy is Lenovo Phab2 Pro of the label as the world’s first Project Tango Smartphone?” Let’s see.
Design and Display
Phab2 Pro measures 7.1 inches (180 mm) by height, 3.5 inches (89 mm) by width, and 0.42 inches (10.7 mm) by depth. It weighs 9.1 ounces (258 g). Compared to Samsung Galaxy S6 or to Sony Xperia T2, this size is enormous. It might even be hard to be held one-handedly.
Lenovo Phab2 Pro comes in Gunmetal Grey or Champagne Gold aluminum body with a smooth surface. The front is designed in 2.5D curved glass. It is dominated by a 6.4-inch in-Plane Switch display with a 2,560 x 1,440 graphic display resolution that allows good viewing angles. The back is made of metal with the camera sensor, depth sensor, motion-tracking sensor, fish-eye camera, and the fingerprint sensor. At the near bottom are the icon of Project Tango and the branding icon of Lenovo. A metal frame is designed at the side, in between the front and back.
Project Tango
Project Tango has been making a lot of noise on and out of the internet for quite a while now, but not all has entirely grasped the concept. Project Tango is a platform that creates augmented reality (AR) experiences through 3D mapping. It uses software from Google and a set of sensors to sense and map surroundings. With Project Tango, devices like Lenovo Phab2 Pro can sense space and motion, track depth, and visualize surrounding objects.
To sense motion and identify the 3D space, Lenovo Phab2 Pro uses a wide-viewing fish-eye camera in conjunction with a regular camera sensor. This positional tracking allows the use of AR for different purposes.
Applications
Lenovo is demonstrating the Project Tango with several different apps such as virtual realistic shooting games that emphasizes the abilities of Project Tango. Lenovo also features an educational app made in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), and a domino app with a Rube Goldberg-style contraption set up with virtual pieces. These applications prove just how the new technology can do. Prior demos of Project Tango have also shown how the technology can function in a wide range of purposes such as in navigating round indoor space or in presenting contextual information.
Lenovo announces that there will be more or less 25 applications of different categories from games to utility apps to location-based apps and so on. By the end of the year, accordingly, there will be 100 apps available in the device’s special app store.
Hardware
Lenovo Phab2 Pro features a Snapdragon 652 processor from Qualcomm, which has eight cores: four Cortex-A72 and four Cortex-A53, running at 1.8 GHz, and an Adreno 510 GPU. Some critics concern this power is not enough for Tango, but Lenovo claims it is heavily customized. This power is accordingly enough for the first generation of Google Tango products.
The product has 64GB of internal storage and 4GB of RAM. Its micro SD card slot is capable of handling up to 128GB.
Battery
With its enormous size, Phab2 Pro is matched with a large 4,050mAh battery. Its charging capabilities are seemingly high, too. According to Lenovo, its talk time is 18 hours and its standby time is over 13 days.
Network
Phab2 Pro will support GSM, UMTS, and LTE bands and will, thus, work on GSM carriers. Since the device supports band 12 and 17, the customers of T-Mobile and AT&T can expect better range and penetration of building. Additionally, Phab2 Pro supports Bluetooth 4.0 and dual-band Wi-Fi.
Camera
Although the Pro has a huge focus on Tango, it still has a regular 8-megapixel front-facing camera and 16-megapixel rear-facing camera, which is capable of saving 4K video. It features Dolby Atmos surround sound and Dolby Audio Capture 5.1 that allows 5.1-channel recording surround sound.
Software
Phab2 Pro runs Android 6.0 Marshmallow with the custom UI changes of Lenovo. This software can alter app icons, change lock screen, and add features. The Pro also has software that can pre-install Netflix, SwiftKey, and McAfee.
Availability and Pricing
Lenovo Phab2 Pro is now available in the worldwide market. It is only sold in Best Buy and selected Lowe’s stores, but it will be made available online by the end of this year. In the US, the Pro will start at the cost of $499. With the illustrious label of the world’s first Project Tango Smartphone, the price is reasonable enough, especially for phablet enthusiasts.
Final Words
Aside from the fact that it is the world’s first Project Tango Smartphone, Lenovo Phab2 Pro is significant in the world of technology because it will serve as the early pioneering example of the development of Tango and any other kinds of technology in the future.
The world has many reasons to try and purchase this new innovation, but as said, as with any other new technology invention, there will be reservations. Nevertheless, Lenovo Phab2 Pro holds firmly its ace card – the Project Tango.
Tango displays a whole new world—a world where mobile computing is immersive. In the world Tango displays, people can shift from the real world to the virtual world and vice versa. Through the course of the coming years in the future, Tango will launch its full capabilities. For now, the tech world has the Lenovo Phab2 Pro – a revolutionary mark in the age of mobile computing.
