During CES this week, Lenovo and Google have announced a partnership to create a consumer smartphone that bakes in Project Tango’s 3D depth sensing technology for tracking movement. Project Tango lead Johnny Lee states that their goal together is to “give tools the abilities they need to understand space and movement at a human scale.” Lee goes into explain the possibilities of what this would mean for individuals and what sorts of things they could with this type of a device, using gaming as an example and that it would be possible to use Tango’s 3D tracking technology to play games and “hide behind furniture” if the game warranted such a task.
Lee also explains that it would be possible to use that same technology to figure out whether or not you would have enough space in a given room for a new piece of furniture to fit, which could be extremely useful and save time and money from buying the wrong product only to find out that you don’t have enough room for it. While the technology in Project Tango is not new as there have been developer kits available for quite a while, this marks the first OEM produced consumer model of a device that can be purchased by anyone who wishes to have a smartphone with Tango’s capabilities.
Lenovo states that the Project Tango smartphone will be ready for consumers to purchase this year, but the better news is that anyone who is interested won’t have to wait too long as it will be available by Summer, with a price point that will be under $500. Lenovo also states that the size of the screen will be under 6.5-inches but a more specific size has not been given at this time. The device will be powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor although it isn’t listed which processor that will be. Qualcomm will be working closely with Lenovo and Google though to make sure that the device hardware and software is as optimized as possible to ensure consumers are getting the very best experience with this new and exciting technology. Lenovo is also inviting developers to join the evolutionary process and help grow the app ecosystem for Project Tango devices. To that end, developers who are interested in helping create for the Project Tango ecosystem can submit their app proposals until February 15th 2016 for a chance at winning funding as well as the ability to have their app showcased on this upcoming device.
