Google is Killing Project Tango
Begining March 1st of 2018, Tango will no longer be supported, with the company pointing developers to embrace its latest AR initiative instead.
This makes sense as ARCore, Google’s new augmented reality platform for Android is almost as good as Tango in many ways and works on hardware you actually want to use. Not to mention that after a few years of existence, the total number of Tango-enabled apps on the Google Play Store currently sits at 37, which isn’t what anyone would call a thriving platform. For some reference, Apple has an AR section on the App Store, and they have 381 apps just in their “AR Apps We Love” section. All in all, there are currently 77 featured AR apps on the App Store, and ARKit has only been available on iOS devices since September.
ARCore currently only works on the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL, but will soon be available on the Galaxy S8 line and will theoretically expand to more phones as time goes on. Tango was never going to be a success if it was tech not possible on phones people actually wanted to buy. ARCore will soon be on the most popular Android brand and hopefully will see more success than Tango.
Goodbye, Project Tango.
- Probably not their intention, but this number is kind of perfect. ↩