Asus, at its ‘Zennovation’ press conference at CES 2017 in Las Vegas, has unveiled two new smartphones – the ZenFone AR and Zenfone 3 Zoom. One of the key highlights of the ZenFone AR is that it is the second smartphone after Lenovo PHAB2 Pro to support Google’s Project Tango that seamlessly stitches Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) experiences. Project Tango enables you to interact with objects in AR, while also navigating through indoor spaces, and see what objects might look like in their homes in actual size, such as new furniture, dining table, bed and more.
Running on Android 7.0 Nougat, the ZenFone AR is also Daydream-ready, which means it can work with Daydream View headset and controller. Compatibility with Google Daydream will enable you to explore virtual reality with apps like Fantastic Beasts and Google Street View, or you could also use personal VR cinema to enjoy rich content from apps such as YouTube, Netflix, Hulu and HBO. What’s more, you can also use the controller and enjoy games such as LEGO BrickHeadz, Need for Speed, Gunjack 2 and many other. Asus demonstrated a couple of apps such as Hot Wheels where you can play car race in AR and VR.
While Asus did not reveal the pricing, it did mention that the smartphone will become available in Q2 2017. However, there is no word on India launch yet.
Asus ZenFone AR Specifications and features
The smartphone features a 5.7-inch WQHD Super AMOLED display running at a resolution of 2560×1440 pixels. The display has a screen-to-body ratio of 79 percent. At the heart of the Asus ZenFone AR is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 quad-core SoC paired with massive 8GB of RAM, which should be good enough to suffice your AR and VR needs.
It also includes ‘Vapor Cooling’ system to ensure that your smartphone doesn’t heat up even with heavy AR and VR apps.
The Zenfone VR comes with a TriCam system featuring a 23-megapixel camera along with motion tracking and depth sensing technology. On the software front, it runs on Android 7.0 Nougat wrapped under Asus ZenUI on top. The smartphone also features a fingerprint sensor embedded inside the home button on front. Other details such as battery capacity, front camera and more are awaited.
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