With smartphones becoming cheaper and flagships pushing the bar on specs with every iteration, their makers have to keep coming up with more and more innovative and sometimes bordering on outrageous features to stay ahead. Whether it is squeezing the sides to active features or fingerprint sensors on the screen, each new offering pushes us a step closer to the glitzy future we saw in movies and games.
With its latest offering — the Zenfone AR — Asus has bet big on the current rage — Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). Launched last week, the phone is Tango and Daydream ready; them being Google’s own AR and VR projects respectively.
The phone is armed with heavy specs, as it should be, given the image processing and the built-for-AR-and-VR tag. It boasts a mammoth 8 GB RAM and 128 GB internal storage; and while it is powered by a somewhat dated Qualcomm 821 processor, the one used in the Zenfone AR is optimised for Tango.
It uses a system Asus called the ‘Tricam’— a combination of three cameras to give you a seamless and realistic AR experience. The 23 MP PixelMaster primary camera with Sony sensors captures your surrounding, the IR depth sensing camera gauges distance and the third camera tracks motion and location.
First things first. The primary camera on this one is quite something. At the product demo, it clicked some very lucid images, all indoors. The f/2.0 aperture lets in good light and the real time HDR feature renders how exactly the image would look in HDR as you click it.
This shooter also comes into play when you use the AR apps that come preloaded on the Zenfone AR. The one I tried at the demo enables users to pick furniture of their choice and see what it looks like when virtually placed in their rooms. All in real time. For example, if you want to buy a sofa, just fire up the app, point your phone to the empty space where you want the sofa placed, and use the app to place the sofa there virtually. You can move closer to it, observe it in detail, and even peek under it. There was also the BMW I Visualiser app that lets you create AR cars with your own customisations, and yes, you can observe them inside-out.
When using the phone with Daydream, I experienced it heating up during gaming; but this is something better judged when reviewing the phone in detail.
At ₹49,999, the price is right up there with the flasghips; and some of its features are too.
(The article first appeared in The Hindu BusinessLine.)