UPDATED 06:00 EDT / JUNE 10 2016

NEWS

A smarter smartphone: Lenovo to release first phone with Google’s Tango augmented reality technology

Lenovo Group Ltd. is to release three new phones in the Phab line, the Phab 2, Phab 2 Plus and Phab 2 Pro. The last of which is the most exciting due to it being the first phone with Google’s Project Tango technology. The large 6.4-inch screen phones should hit the market around August or September in the U.S., and the rest of the world a little later.

Google announced in January this year its plans to team with Lenovo to produce a Tango enabled phone for less than $500. The Phab Plus Pro is that phone, coming in at $499 – The Phab 2 and Phab 2 Plus are $199 and $299 respectively.

Tango technology allows the viewer to see 3-D objects in a virtual environment, “transforming the world into a fully virtual space,” as seen in the video above where a stage becomes a magical garden with virtual animals running around. It does this by sensing the real physical space and the objects in that space, and then projecting virtual objects on top of that.

It will come with virtual reality games (a robot shoot-em-up and domino building game), educational apps (the history of dinosaurs in the demo), but it will also be able to do  more practical things like measure objects and space in your house. Now there’s no excuse for buying a table that is one inch too big for the place you had in mind. It will actually be used by Lowe’s home improvement store chain for furniture demos. Before you buy something, you put a virtual bit of furniture in your house, ta-da!

Lenovo has said there will be around 25 apps in a dedicated app store upon launching the phone, but that will increase to 100 apps at the close of the year.

As for other specs, the Phab 2 Pro packs a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor, 4GB of RAM, 64 GB of storage, a 16-megapixel camera, Dolby Atmos speakers, Dolby 5.1 audio capture, a fingerprint scanner and a 4,000mAh battery.

On top of that, Lenovo also unveiled its latest flagship smartphones, the Moto Z and Moto Z Force at Tech World 2016.

Photo credit: Lenovo

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