Project Tango

This is SlashGear's ASUS ZenFone AR Review - complete with Google Tango onboard. This is a review of both the device and the AR - reviewed together and separately. While the device's full worth does take Tango into account, we've also considered the idea that a consumer might not end up using the AR features here as often as they thought they might. With a fine software build and hardware that's quite top-notch, it wasn't difficult to look beyond the hype.

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The next big thing from Apple won't be a piece of hardware - it won't be the fabled iPhone 8. The next big product to come from Apple will work on the next top-tier iPhone, but it wont work exclusively on that device. While it's the hardware we continue to focus on, and the hardware that's always easiest to discuss, it's something far more complicated (and yet exceedingly easy to work with) that'll change the way we see the world.

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While Google and friends were taking their sweet time, Apple opened the floodgates when it released ARKit. It revealed the nifty things that can be created and experienced with nothing but a smartphone, the very same premise behind Google Tango and Daydream. While these two technologies existed for quite a while, they existed in different worlds. Those worlds are finally colliding in the ASUS ZenFone AR, which can finally be yours. That is, if you’re a Verizon subscriber.

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It's not unusual for smartphones to launch a few months after they've been announced, but a six-month waiting time is next to ridiculous. But that is exactly what ASUS is doing with the ZenFone AR, which has yet to see the light of day in the market. Announced at CES back in January, ASUS CEO Jerry Shen has revealed that it's going to take about a month more before this AR/VR smartphone lands in Verizon's shops in the US.

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The first ASUS-made Google Tango smartphone, Zenfone AR, will be released this summer with Verizon. Yesterday we were told by Google that the device was going to be made available this summer - which wasn't a major surprise. There's already one Lenovo-made Tango device out on the market and it's done predictably OK for sales - with relatively low amounts of units sold. With no carriers in the USA to show it off, it was doomed to do no better than mediocre - for the Zenfone AR, that might not end up happening.

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Augmented reality has actually been around for quite a long while already, but most of its applications have been limited to one-off games and gimmicks or, at most, trivialities. AR, especially on smartphones, has been hampered by the lack of technology as well as the lack of practical use cases. Google’s Project Tango technology, however, has opened the doors to more possibilities, and Pottery Barn owner Williams-Sonoma is taking advantage of that to make shopping for furniture less of a hassle.

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Google has announced a massive milestone for its Cardboard VR viewer today, revealing that it has shipped 10 million units. In a world where virtual reality seems to still be coming into its own, Cardboard is proving to be a significant player. That figure gets even more impressive when we consider that Cardboard has only been available since June 2014, so it took just over two-and-a-half years to move 10 million units.

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ASUS launched the ZenFone AR back at CES in January, but the Project Tango phone wasn't quite ready for its augmented reality close-up. Turns out, there are some ZenFone AR handsets floating around at MWC 2017 this week, not least being used by the team at BMW and Accenture for their iVisualizer demo. Imagine our surprise when the ASUS handset was whipped out - alongside the existing Lenovo Phab 2 Pro - for us to check out on video.

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Tech companies are pushing virtual reality as the next wave of computing, but, as cool as it is, VR as we currenly know it has innate limitations that doesn’t make it suitable for many cases. Like being able to move around the real world with less fear of bumping into things, or being able to interact with said real world as well as a virtual one at the same time. That’s why when there was a need for an immersive and hi-tech experience, a group of organizations and companies turned to the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro and Google’s Tango augmented reality platform to create “Into the Wild”, an experience that aims to not only delight the eyes but also touch the heart.

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One of the great things about new technologies like virtual reality and augmented reality is how they enable us to experience things that would have otherwise been impossible to obtain. Either because of the cost or the danger both to ourselves as well as to those around us. There are, however, some experiences that really have to be seen with your very own eyes in order to appreciate the gravity of the situation. That is why Lenovo, Qualcomm, Google, and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) got together to create "Into the Wild", which is both a showcase of AR technology as well as a call to social action.

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The ZenFone 3 Zoom wasn't the only phone ASUS brought to CES, introducing us to the ZenFone AR as well. Of course, we had a feeling that such a phone would get a reveal thanks to an early leak from Qualcomm, but at this point, that's neither here nor there. The ZenFone AR has been made official, and it packs support for Google Tango and Daydream into the same device.

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CES is an exciting time, but sometimes companies get a little too excited and spill the beans on a new product before it's ready. Such is the case with the ASUS ZenFone AR, which was "leaked" in a sense by a Qualcomm blog post. The ZenFone AR will be the second Google Tango phone to hit the scene, following on the heels of Lenovo's Phab 2 Pro.

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