It seems the first Google Tango smartphone, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, has been delayed. It was the first commercial attempt to imbue a smartphone with an excellent understanding of what is around it, using Google's Project Tango machine vision technologies.
Lenovo had announced the Phab 2 Pro with Google in June, and had then said the smartphone would hit retail shelves by September. The Chinese company has quietly extended the availability date of the Phab 2 Pro from 'summer' to the 'fall' season, which hints at a launch in October. There is no certainty on shipments, but as per Lenovo's US website, the Phab 2 Pro will be 'coming this fall'.
The company has also confirmed to Ausdroid that it is planning on launching the Phab 2 Pro only in those Asia Pacific markets where it has launched smartphones before - this will include India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Cambodia, and Myanmar; countries where an October launch is planned. There's no information on the release in other regions.
Lenovo launched Phab 2 Pro at a price of $499 (roughly Rs. 34,000) and was expected to reach the online markets by August. Lenovo said that the Phab 2 Pro is its first smartphone that harbours three different technologies: motion tracking, area learning, depth perception.
To recall, Project Tango is the project under Google that is aimed at harnessing a machine's potential to sense its surroundings using computer vision and area learning technologies. By the Phab 2 Pro's launch, the project had graduated to just 'Tango'. Lenovo and Google together came up with Phab 2 Pro that is built to use Tango features in it.
Talking about the specifications, Phab 2 Pro has 6.4-inch QHD IPS display, powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 SoC, coupled with 4GB of RAM. It bears a 4050mAh battery, which Lenovo claims can deliver a 15-hour battery life.
The cameras in Phab 2 Pro are the lifelines of the smartphone that actually hone in real depth sensing and area learning. The Phab 2 Pro houses a total of four cameras in it. Those include a 8-megapixel front camera, a 16-megapixel rear RGB camera, a depth-sensing infrared camera with an imager and an emitter, as well as a motion tracking camera. The Phab 2 Pro can record 360-degree and 4K videos as well. There is a fingerprint scanner at the back of the smartphone.
Notably, it also packs Dolby Audio 5.1 Capture technology for recording 3D sound. It's also said to be the first smartphone to be able to record a 360-degree video with Dolby 5.1 stereo capture. Lenovo has also mentioned a suite of 25 apps that will be available in its Tango store pre-installed on the Phab 2 Pro.
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