Qualcomm, the maker of Snapdragon SoCs, which power many of our handsets and tablets, announced today that it was proud to be introducing support for Google’s Tango technology in its upcoming chips.
The move is an important one, seeing how Tango relies on a mix of sensors and processing to enable mixed reality scenarios on your smart devices. With Qualcomm’s support, the Google-developed technology could quickly become mainstream and be available in many upcoming devices.
Qualcomm announced it was supporting Tango with the Snapdragon 652 processor, that’s inside the Lenovo Phab2, the first consumer Tango device. The company also announced that upcoming Snapdragon processors would also support Tango, including the top-of-the-line Snapdragon 820. Qualcomm also touted how, using its advanced technology, it can bring important efficient gains to Tango, allowing the feature to use up less battery life than a normal app.
For those not familiar with Tango, or rather Project Tango as it used to be called, know that it’s a technology which allows your phone or tablet to scan the environment it’s in. It does that in real-time and can then display images, or games or “holograms” on top of the world around you. It’s the promise of mixed or augmented reality, similar to the one HoloLens is creating, but crammed into your phone or tablet.
So far the technology has been in testing inside of Google, but with the Phab2 hitting markets, and the added support of Qualcomm, we might see Tango-enabled devices flood the market in the next couple of years.
Source: Qualcomm