
Lenovo Is Making the First Google Project Tango Phone - ksashikumar
http://techcrunch.com/2016/01/07/lenovo-is-making-the-first-google-project-tango-phone/
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fantunes
Everytime I read lenovo my mind automatically translates it to superfish.

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darkmarmot
Wait, I thought Lenovo was automatically translated to 'Lizard People'?

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venomsnake
That is before the MITM attack

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AndrewKemendo
The biggest use case for depth sensors on a phone are Augmented Reality
applications.

We have been playing with a Tango for a while, but quite frankly I was
disappointed with it's tracking capability compared to what we can achieve
with a standard RGB phone camera within our own application.

We think we are at the point that we can do 3D reconstruction and ranging as
well, and as quickly, with commodity RGB hardware and vSLAM, as you can get
from depth cameras in 95% of the environments.

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miguelrochefort
No, the biggest use case for depth sensors on a phone is a 3D scanning.

You'll be able to scan your Xbox or coffee table, it will identify it, and
then you can do anything with that reference:

\- List it on Craigslist (with detailed specs)

\- Review it on Amazon

\- Download the User's Manual

\- Browse related accessories

\- Request support

\- Etc.

and you'll then be able to sell it on Craigslist or eBay in one click
(including a relatively complete description with specs).

Think of it as an alternative to barcodes or RFIDs for things with unique and
solid shapes.

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AndrewKemendo
Disagree first, because we can do that without depth sensors, so no it isn't
necessary. You can already scan objects with 123D Catch from Autodesk. We can
do dense RGB pointclouds from an iPhone from as little as 14 images:

[http://staging.pair3d.com/pointcloud/couch.html](http://staging.pair3d.com/pointcloud/couch.html)

Also disagree slightly with your use case. For the amount of work it takes to
get a quality 3D scan of something, even with a good IR depth system the
benefit isn't there for the user.

Besides, the ecosystem you describe relies much more on a robust segmentation
system with very well trained data set. You can do that easier and better with
a single or multiple pictures than you can with a 3D scan.

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pilsetnieks
So how many phone projects does Google have now? Nexus, Silver, Ara, and now
Tango?

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psbp
Silver is dead.

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r00fus
For anyone who was wondering what Silver was:
[http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/16/6248561/google-android-
sil...](http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/16/6248561/google-android-silver-
reportedly-on-hold)

"The oft-rumored Android Silver program was supposed to showcase the best
smartphones running Android as Google intended it."

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interdrift
Should I expect any gratuit spyware with it too?

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jlgaddis
If so, it'll likely be much harder to detect as Lenovo could just have
Google's CA sign their cert instead of creating their own (untrusted) CA.

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quantumpotato_
Which is a reminder to us all that the Certificate "Authority" system is
broken..

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bitL
..by design

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on_and_off
Tango is pretty cool, but is supposed to be the consumer application of this
tech ?

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digi_owl
Hard to say what people may come up with.

the original Tango demo showed things like measuring distance between two
points in free space simply by point the camera at each in turn, or taking a
look at a life sized car by walking around it.

Potentially you could have an app that allowed you to see how a sofa would fit
in a room before you buy it.

We are talking about a device that fits in your pocket and can be away of
where it is in relation to everything else in a room.

I think it is one of those things that needs to be out there for a while for
people to play with before we can say if it has any potential or not.

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kriro
So theoretically a Tango phone should be capable of AR simply by looking at
stuff through it (no dedicated AR browser and the like)?

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HillaryBriss
It's somewhat experimental. Developers that buy the Tango Dev kit and invest
the time to learn it and build something share a significant part of the
cost/risk.

Is there any guarantee from Google+Lenovo that this will actually be released
to end consumers?

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gerty
What about Project Ara? When is it coming to fruition?

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psbp
They were set to do a limited launch in Puerto Rico in late 2015, but they've
delayed to 2016, possibly in other markets.

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oneJob
software spyware and hardware spyware champs team up!

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tonetheman
spyware phone. super bad choice from google

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lern_too_spel
My guess is that this is the Motorola Mobility division that Lenovo recently
purchased as opposed to Lenovo proper.

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tonetheman
Yup you are probably correct. I just have a hard time now because I associate
lenovo with spyware. Ah well.

