Google and Lenovo have come together to produce a sub-$500 smartphone running on Android as part of Google’s Project Tango. Project Tango, which was announced in 2014, originated from one of Google’s coolest and most secretive research labs – ATAP.
First consumer smartphone on Google Project Tango
Google came up with Project Tango with hopes of making smartphones capable of understanding depth perception in a similar way to how humans do. So far, Project Tango has been available only for developers in the form of a pricey tablet. Lenovo will be the first company to bring Project Tango to consumer smartphones sometimes later in 2016.
Jeff Meredith, the boss of tablets at Lenovo said, “We don’t believe this technology is one that has a short lifespan. Some innovations last 6 months and fall by the wayside.”
Matt Weinberger of Business Insider, who got a “little hands-on time” with Project Tango apps, said “it works very well” and that he believes it could be “really big – and might turn out to be the hottest announcement out of CES 2016.”
Serves many purposes
Demonstrating the coolness of the technology, Project Tango lead Johnny Lee showed off a bunch of real, useful apps running on the Project Tango platform. Lee used an existing developer tablet for demonstration as Lenovo is not done with the design of its Tango-powered phone.
Lee started with showing off how Project Tango can take measurements of various items such as furniture. The user just needs to position the camera’s viewfinder to one edge of the couch and then on the space he or she wants to measure. The user is then given an accurate measurement. The same can be done for the surface area as well.
Such an application will come in extremely handy if a user needs to paint a wall or needs a measurement from the floor to ceiling. It works just like the Calculator app, according to the description a Google spokesperson gave. It is also capable of sensing space, and Lee showed off this as well. It even has the capability of building a total 3D model of the room.
On Thursday, Alphabet shares closed down 2.41% at $741. Year to date, the stock is down by almost 5%, while in the last month, it is down by over 4%.
