Why Asus ZenFone AR Is A Phone That Matters!

When AR and VR co-exist.

By Prajith
|

Google's one of the most ambitious technologies, Project Tango (based on Augmented Reality) made it's first appearance on a smartphone with the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro recently. While tech-savvy consumers anticipated the smartphone to raise the bar by one level, it barely managed to impress people and was deemed to be an "unfinished project" owing to several reasons.

 
Why Asus ZenFone AR Is A Phone That Matters!
Asus ZenFone AR First Impressions - GIZBOT

Now, that's the story of the first-ever Tango-ready phone. But today, we are here to talk about the second-ever Tango ready phone and trust us; the smartphone doesn't fall short of the "wow" factor. Okay, by now some must be wondering what we are talking about, and some must have guessed about the phone already, we are going to say its name anyway.

SEE ALSO: Samsung Notebook 9 Gets New Updates at CES 2017, Becomes the Most Light-weight Notebook Ever

Yes, we are talking about Asus ZenFone AR - the world's second-ever Tango ready phone and the world's first ever Tango-ready flagship phone.

Why Asus ZenFone AR Is A Phone That Matters!

Apart from packing supreme hardware, the smartphone has a lot more to it than visible. And that's exactly what we are about to talk. Before we begin, in case you are wondering about the specs of the device, we already had it covered, you can read about it here.

Okay, now that specs are out of the window, let's get into some interesting stuff.

Tango-ready along with TriCam system

Tango-ready along with TriCam system

As mentioned earlier, the Asus ZenFone AR is a Tango-ready smartphone. And for obvious reasons, it has an array of sensors each assigned with a specific task such as depth perception, motion tracking, area learning to render the AR capabilities to the smartphone.

The smartphone packs top-notch hardware, Snapdragon 821 chipset and 8GB of RAM, for example, to handle AR smoothly.

It also comes with Asus's TriCam system. As the name itself suggests, there are three rear cameras - one for motion tracking, one for depth sensing, and the 23MP camera. All the three sensors allow the smartphone to create a 3D-model of the surroundings of it.

Once the 3D-model is created, the motion tracking camera tracks the location of the phone as it moves, the depth sensing camera measures the distance between the real-world objects, and these virtual objects will be simulated on the smartphone's screen with the help of the 23MP camera.

 

Supports Google’s DayDream VR tech
 

Supports Google’s DayDream VR tech

In addition to Google's AR platform, the smartphone also supports the search-engine giant's VR platform. This makes it the only phone to support Google's both AR and VR platforms, for now.

It has a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED QHD display which would make for a great screen for immersive VR experience.

 

Okay, AR and VR co-exist, but there’s no interplay happening

Okay, AR and VR co-exist, but there’s no interplay happening

Here's the thing: Both AR and VR co-exist on the Asus ZenFone AR. But, that doesn't necessarily mean that you could use AR sensors on the smartphone and VR headset at a time to enjoy the best of the both. Because, the device, when used with the Goggle's DayDream VR headset, covers the entire back of the phone. As a result, the depth sensing and motion tracking sensors are rendered useless. Moreover, AR on the ZenFone AR is not optimized for VR. So, latency will always be there until the device is optimized.

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