Google Tango-Powered Asus ZenFone AR Smartphone Now Available

Google’s main smartphone product family has been its Pixel series, but the company’s latest mobile project will now have another release available. The ZenFone AR, an Android-powered smartphone that features Google's Tango augmented reality system, is now available from retailers.

At retail, the phone's 6GB RAM/64GB version costs $599, while a higher-end 8GB RAM/128GB version will run for $699. An unlocked version is available on Amazon that’ll work on major carriers and Verizon also sells its own exclusive version.

Read: Google Confirms Summer Asus ZenFone AR Release

Notably, the ZenFone will be the second phone that’s built with hardware to run Google’s Tango augmented reality platform. With hardware like environmental sensors and a rear tri-camera setup, the phone is capable of high-end augmented reality features like motion tracking and depth perception. Augmented reality refers to technology that projects 3D objects or other information within the field of vision of a device like a smartphone camera.

Elsewhere, the phone includes a suite of specifications that fall in line with other high-end cameras. The Snapdragon 821-powered smartphone features a 5.7-inch display with a 2560 x 1440-pixel resolution. On the rear and bottom, the phone also includes a 23-megapixel camera, headphone jack and USB Type C charging port.

For Tango followers, the ZenFone was preceded by the release of the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro late last year. Like the ZenFone, the Phab 2 Pro featured hardware built exclusively for Tango support. While the phone physically stood out from competitors thanks to its 6.4-inch display, reviewers dinged the Phab 2 for lackluster performance and design.

Google has given Tango its share of public support, as the augmented reality platform was a frequent part of its Google I/O developer conference earlier this year. Onstage, Google showcased its Visual Positioning Service system, where you could use Tango smartphones to detect and find objects in the real world. One demo involved a user in a Lowe’s hardware store who wanted to find a specific product. By using a Tango overlay on the smartphone’s camera, the user could navigate through the entire store and find what they were looking for.

Tango was also showcased as part of Google’s education outreach efforts. Through its Expeditions AR program, Tango phones can be used to render objects like DNA strands or dinosaurs for students.

In a Medium post earlier this year, Clay Bavor, vice president of virtual and augmented reality at Google, acknowledged the technology was still in its infancy, but championed its potential.

Instead of using a 2D street-level map to find a restaurant, your AR device will know precisely where it is in space, and walk you to within inches of the table you reserved. Surgeons will overlay 3D medical scans right on top of their patients to better understand what’s going on. With immersive computing around us and woven into our environment, information will be richer, more relevant, and more helpful to us.

However, Tango’s gradual rollout has come with hurdles. With only two phones available to consumers, app support for the platform has been modest so far. On Google’s Play Store, there are currently 37 apps that feature Tango support, including releases from companies like the Wall Street Journal and Lowe’s.

Read: Google Unveils New Standalone Virtual Reality Headsets At I/O 2017

More significantly, the mobile augmented reality field will soon be seeing additional competition. At its Worldwide Developers Conference earlier this year, Apple debuted its ARKit for iOS augmented reality app development. The smartphone giant has been a strong proponent for the platform, as CEO Tim Cook has regularly expressed his interest in augmented reality in the past.

Unlike Tango, ARKit also won’t need to be tied to specific hardware or phone models. As a primarily software-based platform, augmented reality on iOS devices can take advantage of Apple’s existing iPhone and iPad install base.

This doesn’t necessarily stop Apple from doing so down the road — the upcoming iPhone 8 has been rumored to include augmented-reality friendly sensors for depth and motion sensing — but ARKit’s lower overhead gives developers and Apple users something to look forward to now.