Among other news, Android Nougat incorporates Google's Tango, an augmented reality technology that using advanced sensors enables a mobile device to map indoor spaces and know the location of the device within that space.
To summarize, Tango is a new vision technology that allows potentially any mobile device to “see” in much the same way that humans do. We use our eyes to look around, observe the things in our environment all in respect to our current orientation. But right now, as far as our smart devices are concerned, the world ends at the borders of the screen. Tango intends to allow smartphones to always be spatially aware of its location even while on the move, thus enabling them to recognize the environment and adding a virtual layer to the real world. It's meant to understand the room you're inside in three ways: motion tracking, depth perception and area learning. It could have a profound impact on designing and measuring prototypes virtual object.
According to Google, Tango’s AR features can enhance your everyday life and touts this technology as being a bold new step in mobile computing and a revolutionary leap forward for 3D-mapping, spatial positioning and indoor mapping, which says that AR and VR are about to boom in the next five years.
From now on, developers can use this technology to great effect. For example, an app could track the size of the room you're standing in and put potential renovations on top of your home through augmented reality, or to measure your surroundings and re-imagine it with virtual furniture, appliances and more. Another app could allow you to create and build your future bike with modern technology and 3D graphics, or to play in any place bringing virtual objects into your world—from toys to planets to pets—and play with them like they're actually there. With this technology you will be able to navigate stores, museums and other indoor locations, with directions overlaid onto your surroundings.
Now, this possibility that comes with the new Android, can only be enjoyed if you have a hardware that supports it and for now, the only smartphone available to explore this alternative is the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro: the very first "Project Tango" phone and while the large-sized handset was announced not long ago, Lenovo and Google started working on it in January of 2015.
