The technological giant, Google (GOOG, Financial) is trying its hands around Augmented Reality (AR) which is shaping up to become a huge business in the years ahead. Google has always been on the technological forefront by launching projects to add on tech products in the market that can make it the pioneer in such products and such an ambition is linked with the Project Tango tablet which is aimed at developers rather than the general consumers. In the IO conference held by Google late last week, the chip-maker Qualcomm (QCOM, Financial) stepped in to confirm that the SoC to be used in this new smartphone from Google would be the former’s Snapdragon 810 SoC with Adreno 430 graphics. Let’s quickly get into the facts that have been made public with respect to this tango of these two well established companies for developing the much awaited forthcoming Project Tango smartphone.
Moving towards augmented reality
In the past year, Google had emphasized upon Tango to be the interface to offer mobile devices a human understanding of space and motion. As the tech company has been showing its interest in virtual reality (VR), this project could play a vital role in explaining how users and phones interact with the environment.
With the AR market picking up steam, this project of Google is of immense importance as it gears up to bring in features that could explain both augmented reality and virtual reality. Augmented reality is the superimposition of digital graphics on real-world images, while virtual reality belongs to a completely digital world. In fact, before such a Project Tango development by Google, such innovative and breath-taking features were only present through the Nvidia (NVDA, Financial) tablet.
To promote 3D-motion tracking capabilities through the Project Tango, Google and Qualcomm are about to be working together with the latter revealing that this smartphone would be equipped with a camera, gyroscope and accelerometer to provide motion tracking on its platform. Qualcomm has stated that it would give developers access to its Developer network to take advantage of features included in the premium tier Snapdragon 810 processor which would in turn improve the performance of the other Android applications. After Google unveiled the device at its IO conference, Senior Vice President of Qualcomm Technologies, Raj Talluri, stated – “We're excited to work together with Google and Android developers to help deliver new, innovative visual experiences using depth-sensing technology on mobile devices…”
It is notable that the Snapdragon 810 is presently the fastest smartphone system on chip and powers solely the HTC One M9 which has faster processing speed than the iPhone 6 of Apple and Galaxy S6 of Samsung. So, it appears that the selection of Snapdragon 810 as SoC for the Project Tango smartphone is going to make the device a smarter one and more interesting for the developers. Though the smartphone to be developed is still not ready for commercial use, Qualcomm’s complete announcement on the smartphone can be accessed on its dedicated page for developers.
Final word
With one of the world’s largest chipset manufacturers joining hands with Google to develop the first 3D smartphone, developers are waiting for the final release of the device which is expected to arrive later this summer. The platform for this device would be unveiled in the third quarter of the year, but till then, the developers interested in the device’s know-how can register with Qualcomm to get updates on the details and pricing of the Tango smartphone.
