Asus to unveil Tango-enabled smartphone ZenFone AR at CES 2017

Asus has a Google Tango-enabled AR smartphone under wraps that will be unveiled at next year's CES, in Las Vegas. This has been confirmed by Asustek CEO Jerry Shen for Korean publication DigiTimes.

The upcoming smartphone, called ZenFone AR, will be powered by Google's augmented reality platform Tango and will launch sometime next year “at a competitive price”, Shen said. Not much else is known about the phone at this point, apart from the fact that it will have to meet some hardware requirements in order to support Tango. The platform requires a variety of sensors for advanced motion tracking and depth perception capabilities in order to create 3D environment data maps for a convincing AR experience.

As far as other specs go, if the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, which is the first Tango-enabled phone, is anything to go by, we would say that the ZenFone AR will have at least 4 GB of RAM and rock a 2K or higher-res display.

Asus also plans to expand its ZenFone series lineup with more devices in the second quarter of 2017, and launch a lineup VR devices in the third quarter that won't be focused on mobile VR, but will rather be all-in-ones, featuring built-in cameras, sensors, and other hardware. Asustek's VR headsets will “differentiate from models available on the market such as HTC Vive or Oculus Rift,” said Shen without providing further details.