Lenovo introduces first consumer Project Tango handset — ‘Phab 2 Pro’

Lenovo Chairman and CEO Yuanqing Yang holds up the new Phab2 Pro phone during the keynote address at the Lenovo Tech World event, Thursday, June 9, 2016, in San Francisco.

The new handset comes as Lenovo reported dismal March quarter results and its first annual loss in six years, and as it continues to wrestle with the integration of a U.S. acquisition and a slowdown in demand for smartphones and computers. Also, a Project Tango tutorial is available to run the user through all its capabilities.

Lenovo’s Phab2 Pro will feature extra cameras and sensors that let the device perceive things in its surroundings. It includes three basic sensors – motion tracking, depth perception, and area learning. Additional sensors scan nearby objects and location at a speed of 250,000 per second.

Lenovo PHAB2, PHAB2 Plus and PHAB2 Pro have been priced at $199, $299 and $499 respectively. “It has a 6.4” QHD (1440 x 2560) which can adapt to various levels of lighting conditions. An 8MP front-facing camera, a 16MP RGB rear camera, a motion tracking rear camera and a depth tracking rear camera.

The audio on the phone is Dolby Atmos with 5.1 Audio Capture and has 3 mics for 360° of noise cancellation. The last of which is the most exciting due to it being the first phone with Google’s Project Tango technology. Since the phone is capable of getting rough measurements of the environment, users could digitally place home furnishings to get a view of how it would look in their real homes.

Jeff Meredith, vice president and general manager of Android and Chrome computing at Lenovo, explained that the company wants to take Project Tango from a concept to a reality. Users can make their favourite pets such as virtual dinosaurs to walk on the table.

The new Tango technology add augmented reality to a smartphone and work much what you’d expect from a scaled-down version of Microsoft’s HoloLens.

You see, unlike most manufacturers that trumpet how great their device’s camera is or how fast it can be unlocked with a finger, Lenovo chose one aspect to focus on – one it teased earlier this year at CES.