Lenovo, Google Unveil Phab 2 Pro: A Phone That Knows Its Way Around a Room
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By Associated Press | Updated: 10 June 2016 12:29 IST
Highlights
Phab 2 Pro will use sensors to track motions and map building interiors.
Lenovo says the Phab 2 Pro will sell for $500.
The phone is expected to be available globally by mid-September.
A Lenovo smartphone unveiled Thursday will be clever enough to grasp
your physical surroundings - such as the room's size and the presence of
other people - and potentially transform how we interact with
e-commerce, education and gaming.
Today's smartphones track location
through GPS and cell towers, but that does little more than tell apps
where you are. Tapping Google's 3-year-old Project Tango , the new Phab 2
Pro phone will use software and sensors to track motions and map
building interiors, including the location of doors and windows.
That's
a crucial step in the promising new frontier in "augmented reality," or
the digital projection of lifelike images and data into a real-life
environment.
If Tango fulfills its promise, furniture shoppers
will be able use the Phab 2 Pro to download digital models of couches,
chairs and coffee tables to see how they would look in their actual
living rooms. Kids studying the Mesozoic Era would be able to place a
virtual Tyrannosaurus or Velociraptor in their home or classroom - and
even take selfies with one. The technology would even know when to
display information about an artist or a scene depicted in a painting as
you stroll through a museum.
Tango will be able to create
internal maps of homes and offices on the fly. Google won't need to
build a mapping database ahead of time, as it does with existing
services like Google Maps and Street View. Nonetheless, Tango could
raise fresh concerns about privacy if controls aren't stringent enough
to prevent the on-the-fly maps from being shared with unauthorized apps
or heisted by hackers.
Lenovo says the Phab 2 Pro will sell for
$500 when it begins shipping in the US in August. The device is
expected to be available throughout the world by mid-September, in
advance of Apple's anticipated release of the iPhone 7.
In another
effort to put a new twist on smartphones, Lenovo also previewed the
newest models in its Moto line, which it bought from Google two years
ago.
The Moto Z and Moto Z Force will both let people snap on
additional equipment called "Mods" to the back of the phones. The
initial Mods include a speaker to amplify music, a projector for
displaying photos and video from the phone and a power pack that
provides 22 hours of additional battery. The phones will be available
exclusively in the US through Verizon this summer before a global
release in the fall.
The new phones are coming out as phone sales
are slowing. People have been holding off on upgrades, partly because
they haven't gotten excited about the types of technological advances
hitting the market during the past few years. Phones offering intriguing
new technology such as Tango could help spur more sales.
But
Tango's room-mapping technology is probably still too abstract to gain
mass appeal right away, says Ramon Llamas, an analyst at the IDC
research group.
"For most folks, this is still a couple steps
ahead of what they can wrap their brains around, so I think there's
going to be a long gestation period," Llamas says.
Other
smartphones promising quantum leaps have flopped. Remember Amazon's Fire
phone released with great fanfare two years ago? That souped-up phone
featured four front-facing cameras and a gyroscope so some images could
be seen in three dimensions. The device also offered a tool called
Firefly that could be used to identify objects and sounds. But the Fire
fizzled, and Amazon no longer even sells the phone.
The Phab 2 Pro
also looks impressive, with a 6.4-inch display screen and four cameras
to help perform its wizardry. Lenovo boasts the phone's sensors can
capture about 250,000 measurements per second.
Despite all the
fancy hardware, the key to the Tango phone's success is likely to hinge
on the breadth of compelling apps that people find useful in their
everyday lives.
Google previously released experimental Tango
devices designed for computer programmers, spurring them to build about
100 apps that should work with the Phab 2 Pro. Home improvement retailer
Lowe's is releasing an app that enables Phab 2 Pro users to measure
spaces with the phone and test how digital replicas of appliances and
other decor would look around a house.
Both large and small tech
companies are betting that augmented reality, or AR , will take off
sooner than later. Microsoft has been selling a $3,000 prototype of its
HoloLens AR headset. Others, such as Facebook's Oculus and Samsung, are
out with virtual reality, or VR, devices. Google has one coming as well
through its Daydream project. While AR tries to blend the artificial
with your actual surroundings, VR immerses its users in a setting that's
entirely fabricated.
The AR and VR devices out so far invariably
require users to wear a headset or glasses. In many cases, they also
must be tethered to more powerful personal computers, restricting the
ability to move around.
None of that is necessary with the Phab 2
Pro. Instead, you get an augmented look at your surroundings through the
phone's screen.
"This has a chance to become pervasive because
it's integrated into a device that you already have with you all the
time," says Jeff Meredith, a Lenovo vice president who oversaw
development of the Tango device. "You aren't going to have to walk
around a mall wearing a headset."
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