Lenovo Phab 2 Pro 'World's First Tango Smartphone' Now Set to Launch in November

The first Tango smartphone in the world was made by Lenovo, and was due to launch in September. That didn't happen, and Lenovo quietly delayed the release "to this fall". Now, a Google representative has confirmed that the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro is coming to markets next month.

For those unaware, the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro was unveiled at the Lenovo Tech World event in June this year. The smartphone has been made in collaboration with Google, and is the first smartphone that uses AR and VR to sense and map surroundings. The smartphone will make "AR and VR as pervasive as the GPS", and will be intelligent enough to understand the size of the room you're in, and even sense the presence of people in it. Project Tango (now renamed as just 'Tango') is expected to transform how we interact with e-commerce, education and gaming.

During the launch, the company claimed that the smartphone would hit the market in September, but that didn't happen, and Lenovo quietly pushed the release to fall. Now, Clay Bavor, head of VR at Google, has told CNET that the phone will go on sale this November.

Around the same time Google's two Pixel smartphones will hit the market as well. The Lenovo Phab 2 Pro's abilities are based on machine vision, with a camera and sensor setup that provides motion tracking, depth perception, and area learning. This can enable augmented reality applications like indoor navigation, search, and gaming. With depth sensing, it can be used for gesture tracking in virtual reality as well.

And for all of this to work, Lenovo has introduced four cameras inside the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro. It bears an 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 smartphone is huge with a 6.4-inch QHD display, and is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 processor paired with a 4GB of RAM.

It is expected to be priced at $499 (roughly Rs. 33,300) on launch. The Lenovo Phab 2 Pro also packs a 4050mAh battery and promises 15 hours of battery life.