Asus’ Tango-supported ZenFone AR coming to US in July

We knew that the ZenFone AR would be hitting the shelves sometime this summer, but now we have a more precise timeframe of when it would be launching in the US. The company CEO has recently confirmed to Engadget that the device will officially debut in Taiwan in mid-June, followed by the US sometime at the end of June or in early July.

Dubbed one of the worst-kept secrets of CES 2017, the ZenFone AR is the Taiwanese company’s first ever Tango-powered smartphone. In fact, it’s the second ever Tango device to hit the market and the first to bring Tango and Daydream in one package. Tango, in case you’ve never heard of it before, is Google’s take on augmented reality: it uses an advanced 3D sensing chip to map the user’s position in relation to their surroundings without GPS or complicated external signals. Google thinks this might revolutionize how we interact with apps, and we were quite impressed by its progress at Google I/O 2017.

Now, Google and ASUS have already assured us that the ZenFone AR, which was unveiled back in January, is still alive and will launch in select markets this summer. Well, if you were looking to buy ASUS’ Tango-powered smartphone and was wondering exactly when in the summer the device would be launching, the answer is right here: in an interview with Engadget, Jerry Shen, CEO of ASUS, has clarified that the ZenFone AR will arrive in Taiwan in mid-June, and it’ll make its US debut on Verizon shortly after in late June or early July.

According to the company, of 100+ Tango AR apps, as many as 50 run stably on the ASUS ZenFone AR, but it expects the number to grow significantly in the coming months. The ZenFone AR has a 5.7-inch QHD OLED screen – a lot smaller than the Lenovo Phab 2 Pro, the first Tango-supported smartphone – and is powered by Snapdragon 821 and 8GB of RAM.

The absence of Snapdragon 835 is disappointing, given the device’s launch date, but the chipset’s Hexagon 680 processor, which was fine-tuned by Qualcomm itself, as well as its vapor cooling system should provide plenty of power without overheating. There will be a version with 6GB of RAM as well though details regarding the price difference are unavailable at the moment. Shen has, however, stated that the company wouldn’t “dare to charge more than” the Galaxy S8 Plus for the upcoming ZenFone, so here’s hoping that it’s not prohibitively expensive.

Are you interested in getting the ZenFone AR once it launches? What are your thoughts on Google’s AR? Let us know by leaving a comment below!