The event will be hosted in San Francisco

May 10, 2016 15:06 GMT  ·  By

Mark June 9 on your calendars as the day when Lenovo will be unveiling their highly anticipated Project Tango phone. During this year’s CES in January, Lenovo announced that it signed a partnership with Google to release a consumer phone with Project Tango built-in. The company will be selling the first Project Tango phones this year for less than $500 (€439).

At the event, the company announced that the device would have a screen smaller than 6.5 inches, but no other details on the specs were released. Project Tango was unveiled two years ago and it allows devices to map the 3D space around them in real time, using a combination of cameras and sensors.

The technology platform is developed by Google and uses computer vision to enable mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, to detect their position relative to the world around them without using GPS or external signals.

App developers can use Tango to transform their phones into a game level or create elements into virtual and augmented environments. Devices that have Tango incorporated can recognize places that they’ve been before, making it a technology that could be used for various purposes, not just entertainment.

Earlier this year, Intel released a smartphone with Project Tango

Lenovo is not the first manufacturer to develop a phone with Project Tango incorporated. Earlier this year, Intel released the RealSense Smartphone with Project Tango technology for the price of just $400 (€351). It came with a 6.0-inch display that supported Quad HD and packed 2GB of RAM and Intel Gen 8 graphics.

The smartphone also came with an 8-megapixel camera on the back and 2MP in the front. The depth camera could capture dense data for 3D scanning of surrounding objects and elements.

It’s highly likely that Lenovo’s phone will come with a powerful camera for capturing 3D dimensions of the room and transpose them into virtual reality. Back at this year’s CES, Lenovo also invited developers to submit their best ideas and receive funding for development. These apps will be featured in the Lenovo Tango phone.