After more than two years of tinkering and finessing, today Google finally officially launched its Tango smartphone augmented reality system to the masses.
Right now, it’s only available on Lenovo’s $499 Phab2 Pro, which arrives in stores in the US today, but you can expect to see this in a bunch of Android phones in the next year or so.
About 35 applications are launching with Tango support at launch. I had a chance to demo about a dozen of them and results were mixed. Developers are really still figuring out what these cameras are good for and some might be trying a bit too hard to capitalize on the depth-sensing feature. There are certainly some ground-breaking apps in early infancy.
For gamers, Tango certainly offers a chance to have a more intense gaming session. Titles like Crayola Color Blaster show the ability of games to capitalize on larger playing spaces while utilizing the technology’s tracking abilities.
