Lenovo’s Tango-enabled augmented reality smartphone

Chinese technology major Lenovo has unveiled its PHAB2 Pro smartphone powered by Tango technology, a set of sensors and software from Google that senses and maps its surroundings to enable augmented reality experiences.

The $499 (India prices yet to be announced) PHAB2 Pro will be globally available from September. "Put simply, we wanted to take what was an amazing concept and transform it into a commercially viable mobile device," Jeff Meredith, Lenovo's Vice President and General Manager, Android and Chrome Computing, said in a statement on Thursday.

"Tango enables our devices to sense physical motion and space and, as a result, has the power to change how we interact with our surroundings. We believe that devices with positional tracking functionality will be pervasive and are happy that the PHAB2 Pro will introduce these new capabilities, making your phone even more useful,” said Johnny Lee, Engineering Director, Google, in a statement.

With Tango technology, the PHAB2 Pro can even begin to change the way people think about mapping indoor spaces to create new experiences like future augmented reality museum tours via the GuidiGO app. Three core technologies bring Tango experiences to life: motion tracking, depth perception and area learning.

Through motion tracking, the PHAB2 Pro's "eye" sees its own location in 3D. Area learning tells the smartphone its location. Depth perception lets the device analyse the shape of the world around it by detecting surfaces and obstacles. The 6.4-inch PHAB2 Pro boasts an intelligent Assertive display with quad-HD (2,560 x 1,440) resolution, capable of optimising image quality based on ambient lighting and content.

PHAB2 Pro is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor, has 4G LTE connectivity, along with time stamping and camera and sensor processing capabilities. The smartphone features Dolby Audio Capture 5.1 with Dolby Atmos playback capabilities to help capture life's moments on video with great quality audio and packs a 16MP camera.