Asus Zenfone AR with 8GB RAM and Google Tango launched: Here's all you need to know
Touted to be the world's first phone with 8GB of RAM, the Asus Zenfone AR, was finally launched in India today (July 13, 2017). The phone has been announced as a Flipkart exclusive and will be available on the platform starting 4pm today at a price of Rs 49,999.
To sweeten the deal, the e-commerce portal is offering the Google Daydream VR headset at a discount of Rs 2,500 along with the smartphone.
Making it's way to the country more than six months after it was unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show 2017, the phone is expected to give a tough fight to the existing flagships in the market because of its high-end specs and interesting gimmicks.
Apart from being the first smartphone to feature a massive 8GB RAM, the Zenfone AR also brings with it support for Google Tango Augmented Reality and Daydream Virtual Reality platforms. At the time of its global launch, incorporation of these technologies made the Zenfone AR the first smartphone to feature these AR and VR techs together in a single package.
Support for Google Tango and Daydream
Earlier in the month, Asus started teasing the launch of the Zenfone AR with the DayToDream hashtag along with a GIF hinting at the AR, VR capabilities of the phone.
And unsurprisingly, the Taiwanese tech giant during the phone's launch event in India focused heavily on how the Asus Zenfone AR with its support for Tango and Daydream will enable users to change the way they interact with their surroundings and experience immersive content.
For the uninitiated, Google's Project Tango is the company's attempt to get mobile phones and tablets to "see the way we see". Project Tango helps the device gain full spatial awareness, or the ability to understand your environment and your relation to it.
Daydream, on the other hand, is Cupertino-based tech giant's VR platform. Unlike Tango, Daydream has been more popular with smartphone-makers, thanks to its much lower requirements.
The platform is a set of VR hardware standards for manufacturers to follow. The purpose of Daydream is to improve the VR experience on Android phones, and make VR apps and VR video content more accessible to more people.
What's under the hood
The phone comes on board with a fingerprint scanner and a 5.7-inch 515 ppi Super AMOLED QHD display covered by a sheet of Corning Gorilla Glass 4 at the front.
Under the hood, the handset comes packing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor paired with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of internal memory – expandable up to a massive 2TB using a MicroSD card. For those confused by Asus' choice of equipping a flagship in 2017 with a Snapdragon 821 SoC, the company claims that the variant of the 821 being used in the phone is custom-made for the Tango platform. The company has also revealed that the Asus ZenFone AR sports a vapor cooling system to prevent the phone from overheating.
Coming to the optics, the smartphone brings with it a 23-megapixel Sony IMX318 module with TriTech+ which is a triple camera solution for carrying out its AR needs. The first of the three is a 23MP rear camera, second is a motion-tracking camera, and third is a depth sensing camera. Additionally, it also comes with an autofocus system, second-gen Laser Focus, dual-PDAF, and continuous focus system.
The rear camera also supports 4-axis OIS (optical image stabilisation), 3-axis EIS (electronic image stabilisation) for video recording and is also capable of recording 4K video. The smartphone has also been equipped with an 8-megapixel selfie shooter with f/2.0 aperture and an 85-degree wide angle lens. Powering the package is a 3300mAh battery.
Powering the package is a 3300mAh battery with Qualcomm 3.0 Quick charge capabilities that lets it charge over 60 per cent of the battery in less than 39 minutes.