This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

tango

Google has been working on its Project Tango augmented reality platform since at least 2022, just that's merely when it was unveiled. A lot of work has gone into improving the way phones analyze their environments, simply does that translate well into consumer products? In the instance of the first official Tango phone, that's a big, fat "no." The Lenovo Phab2 Pro is bachelor unlocked for $500, just the reviews have non been kind.

The reviews accept chosen out three main issues with the Phab2 Pro, the almost obvious of which is that this phone is huge. I don't mean it'south huge like we telephone call the V20 or Pixel XL "huge." This phone is almost a tablet. In fact, in that location are Amazon tablets that are smaller. The Phab2 Pro has a 6.4-inch screen and bulky aluminum frame. Normally I'd praise the use of an aluminum unibody design, but in this case it makes the phone incredibly heavy. Ars Technica points out information technology weighs more than one-half a pound.

Every bit a upshot of being gigantic, the Phab2 Pro's ergonomics are off. The buttons are hard to attain, and the fingerprint sensor is much lower on the dorsum than it should be. 1 of the Tango sensor windows is where yous'd expect the fingerprint sensor to exist, and then you smudge upward with your finger constantly.

Speaking of the Tango sensors, the Phab2 Pro's small-scale hardware doesn't seem to be up to the task of using them. The hardware operation is issue number two. Tango includes a depth sensor, IR projector, and a motion tracker. Combined with the phone'due south internal gyroscope and accelerometer, it knows where in the world it is and how its position relates to other objects. Y'all tin can employ this to measure things, place virtual objects in the existent globe, and so on. The Phab2 Pro just gets very laggy when yous're doing it.

pixel phab2

This phone has a Snapdragon 652 SoC, which is a mid-range bit. Lenovo says the software has been tuned to pipage all the Tango data through efficiently, but that was not my experience, nor were other reviewers impressed. Information technology tin't continue up with phones running Snapdragon 820 and 821 fries. Even some older devices best it. The Phab2 Pro has a large 4050mAh battery, but the phone runs for barely over an hour while utilizing the Tango sensors.

The performance issues in Tango apps are obvious, especially the Matterport Scanner, which is probably the nigh constructive demonstration of Tango. Information technology lets you brand 3D scans of objects and room. It's just very wearisome and buggy. Many of the other apps and games feel like tech demos, and the selection is poor. This is the third major effect cited in Phab2 Pro reviews. All the games are i-flim-flam ponies and the apps are just sluggish and buggy plenty to be frustrating to employ, even if you have a employ for them. By and large, developers aren't interested in making apps for a platform that almost no one uses. At that place are no killer apps for Tango, and I don't know that there will exist one any time soon without more developer involvement.

Google isn't giving up on Tango because of one bad phone. In that location will be more, and the hardware will improve. We're just going to need a improve Tango phone before we'll know whether or non augmented reality is living up to the hype.