Google to drop support for AR focused Project Tango on March 1st

Back in February 2014, Google introduced Project Tango, an Augmented Reality system that was designed for mobile use. Today, Google announced that it will no longer support it starting on March 1, 2018. But this doesn't mean that Google is closing the door on AR. It means that Tango is being replaced by Google's ARCore, which is based on software unlike the more hardware oriented Tango.

Tango peaked in June 2016 when the Lenovo Phab2 Pro was unveiled as the first Project Tango phone. With a huge 6.4-inch screen, the handset came with three cameras on back. The trio included a 16MP RGB camera, a snapper for depth perception, and a motion tracking camera. The result was a phone that offered AR features and ran AR flavored apps. When Lenovo showed off the phone, it demonstrated an app that could allow users to take an image of a piece of furniture from an ad, and show how it would look in any room, from all angles.

Earlier this year, the Asus ZenFone AR launched with support for Tango and Google's VR platform Daydream. Powered by the Snapdragon 821 SoC, the phone, now discontinued by Verizon, was equipped with a 23MP camera with Sony IMX 318 sensors and OIS. Motion tracking and depth sensing cameras were also placed om back. The phone featured a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display with a 1440 x 2560 QHD display.

Now, as Google shifts its focus to ARCore, software becomes the big driver of AR, which means that you can expect to see Augmented Reality show up as a feature on a large number of Android handsets.


source: @projecttango via TechCrunch