The Asus Zenfone AR

Asus Unveils Google’s Project Tango Enabled Zenfone AR at CES 2017

With the launch of the world’s first #ProjectTango supported smartphone dubbed the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, another Asian OEM is all set to launch its take on Google’s ambitious AR plans. Asus CEO, Jerry Shen has now revealed that the company aims to launch its AR supported smartphone dubbed the Zenfone AR early next year at the CES 2017 that’s set to be held in Las Vegas.

A quick recap, Google’s Project Tango is based on machine vision that uses a camera and a bunch of sensors to provide motion tracking, depth perception, and area learning. With this AR apps can fully utilize and make use of indoor navigation, gaming and more.

Earlier this month, the world's first Tango smartphone - the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro - finally went on sale priced at $499 (roughly Rs. 33,300). It is the first commercial product from Google's Project Tango team that was working on machine vision in mobile devices.

What's so special about Google's Project Tango phones?

Project Tango is an advanced mobile technology from Google that enables augmented reality (AR) gaming and utilities in a smartphone. It is specifically used provide enhanced 3D-based GPS navigation system and AR gaming experience, wherein users will be able to play character games using their own house as the gaming arena. Another interesting aspect of AR-phone is that AR-phone has the ability to provide immersive e-shopping experience.

For instance, Wayfair's in-house AR app now compatible with Lenovo's Phab 2 Pro, allows shoppers to visualise furniture and décor in their homes at scale before making a purchase, tackling one of the largest barriers to online shopping -- the inability to get a good sense for a product's aesthetic, and how large or small the item is. Besides that, it is believed to be a boon to visually-challenged people, as it can be used to give accurate navigation guidance when blind people find themselves in an uncharted place or a building premise. For instance, while shopping for groceries, the smartphone can take you directly to the shelf containing the product you are looking for.

Besides Zenfone AR, Asus also plans to launch the Zenfone 4 series and VR (Virtual Reality) head gears with built-in cameras, sensors, and controllers in the second and third quarter of 2017, respectively, DigiTimes reported.

Specifications, the ZenFone AR 

• The Asus Zenfone AR is a sleek phone that does not look like the tanky Tango devices of before. It features a 5.7" Quad HD (1440 x 2560 pixels) Super AMOLED display, with an impressive 79% screen-to-body ratio, which is a great fit for Daydream. Indeed, the phone is Daydream-ready as well.
• Powered by Quad Core 2.0 GHz & Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 SoC processor.
• It's also packing a whopping 8GB (or 6GB) of RAM. That might sound excessive, but remember in our Tango review, the amazing Matterport Scenes app would shut off after a few minutes due to low memory. It was blowing up the Phab 2 Pro, which "only" had 4GB of RAM. Tango basically needs all the power it can get.
• The Zenfone AR is packing a 23MP camera with the usual extra Tango sensors of a motion tracking camera and depth-sensing camera. Unlike Lenovo's design, which stacked every sensor in a line on the back of the phone, everything is in a neat little rectangle with the Zenfone AR
• For storage options, Asus has you covered with flavors in 32/64/128 or 256GB of UFS 2.0 storage plus a MicroSD slot. Rounding out the spec sheet is a 3300mAh battery, 8MP front camera, quick charging, NFC, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. For the software, Asus is shipping Android 7.0 Nougat with the usual Asus skin (ZenUI 3.0) on top. 

The Zenfone AR doesn't just do augmented reality, it's also compatible with Google's Daydream VR standard. You can slap the device in a headset and use it to power a VR session. Before you get any wild ideas of using the AR sensors of Tango and the VR headset at the same time, remember that the Daydream headset covers the whole phone. It would block the Tango sensors on the Zenfone AR. There's also the matter of Tango not being optimized for VR, so the AR rendering pipeline isn't really fast enough for the low latency that non-vomit-inducing VR requires.

Like any new ecosystem, the one thing Tango needs more than anything is for people to actually make augmented reality apps. The Asus CES press conference delivered, with a representative from Gap coming on stage with a "dressing room" app. Gap's app shows you a full-size mannequin wearing items from its clothing line. You give your dimensions to the app, and an accurate mannequin will be generated that you can walk around. The app isn't full of hand-made designs, either. It uses the same CAD data Gap uses to design its clothing, along with cloth physics to simulate how the clothes will lie on the model.

Now, some bad news: there was no price attached to the Zenfone AR, but Asus did promise a release window for "Q2 2017." That's actually a long time away in the smartphone world. By then we'll all be talking about the latest Snapdragon 835 devices. Depending on how fast that new chip is, the Zenfone AR might not qualify as "high-end" by then.