Project Tango Tablet Appears on Google Play Store

One of the more interesting initiatives undertaken by Google has been Project Tango, which looks to imbue an Android smartphone or tablet with real-time 3D mapping capabilities. Back in June, Google announced the tablet-sized edition of Project Tango, which was set to go on sale later this year. It seems that we’re pretty close to this happening, as the Project Tango tablet has actually appeared on the Google Play Store.

The discovery was made by the good folks at 9to5Google, though it should be noted that it is just about impossible to navigate to the product listing unless you have the link or know to search for “Project Tango” on the store’s site.

Currently, the tablet is listed as “coming soon,” with no price or release date information. However, when we first heard about the tablet this past summer, it was said that it’d go on sale for a whopping $1,024. The reason for such a high price? The Project Tango tablet is basically about as powerful an Android tablet as has ever been made: it packs 4 GB of RAM, 128 GB of internal storage, a Tegra K1 with 192 GPU cores and NVIDIA’s 4-Plus-1 quad-core ARM cortex CPU. It’s also got room for a SIM card, meaning that it’ll be capable of connecting to cellular data networks – and all of that is without taking its advanced 3D depth sensors and other hardware. In short, it costs a lot of money, but it’ll do a lot, too.

The page also makes it explicitly clear that this is a devkit – not necessarily a consumer product. As such, Google is offering no warranty and won’t make any repairs or refunds should something go wrong. Project Tango is meant for developers, so if you’re not planning on making apps with this thing, you really don’t have any business buying it.

That said – man, how cool would it be to have your own 3D mapping tablet? I’m excited that Google is making it available for purchase by anyone, even if it’s being pushed specifically for developers. If only I had a spare thousand bucks lying around…

[Source: 9to5Google]