Google VR head says Lenovo’s Google Tango phone is coming this November

Lenovo has been promising the commercial release of its Google Tango-enabled Phab 2 Pro for quite some time.

It debuted in early June 2016 at Lenovo’s Tech World Conference, with web copy on its Canadian site stating that the phone would arrive later that summer. In September, the date was then bumped to fall 2016 on both the American and Canadian sites.

Now, however, we may finally an indication of when the product will hit the Canadian market.

Google’s head of virtual reality, Clay Bavor, told CNET that the phone will go on sale this November. Though it’s unclear whether this confirmation is also applicable to Canada, the timing would make sense if Lenovo’s Canadian operations hope to achieve the fall launch they’re promising.

The device has a 6.4-inch 2560 x 1440 pixel display, four cameras and a 4,050 mAh battery. The Phab 2 Pro is powered by a Snapdragon 652 SoC and 4GB of RAM. The phone’s specifications allow it to complete various augmented reality tasks including measuring real world objects or playing 3D games.

While the device is optimized for AR, it won’t work with Google’s Daydream View VR headset, purportedly because it lacks the AMOLED screen necessary for VR applications.

“You can imagine in the future you won’t have to make a choice, but that’s a bit further out,” said Bavor.

As it stands, the device is listed as being $499 on both the Canadian and American sites, though if it turns out that the figure is in USD, that could bump the handset to about $650 CAD.

Related: Phab2 Pro Hands-on: The world’s first Tango smartphone

[source]CNET[/source]