Taiwanese electronics company Asus on Thursday launched the Zenfone AR, which it claimed is the world’s first Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) smartphone. The phone is priced at ₹49,999 and is available exclusively on Flipkart.

The phone is both Tango and Daydream-ready. Tango is Google’s AR application, while Daydream is its VR offering. The Zenfone AR joins smartphones such as Google’s own flagship — the Pixel and Motorola’s Moto Z — in offering full Daydream compatibility.

The phone sports the Asus TriCam system for AR. The set-up comprises three cameras — a camera for motion-tracking, a depth-sensing camera, and a 23 MP PixelMaster 3.0 camera that is also the phone’s HDR-enabled primary shooter. The depth-sensing camera uses an InfraRed laser to gauge the phone’s distance from objects and the 23 MP camera, which uses a Sony image sensor, captures the background for building an AR experience for the user. Asus demonstrated various applications of the AR-ready features such as virtual furniture shopping and education. Using AR-ready applications, the Zenfone AR can be used to virtually place a furniture piece of a user’s choice in their rooms to see what it would look like, how much space it takes, etc. The feature can also be used to experience an automobile inside-out in a similar fashion.

The phone also slides into Google’s Daydream viewer, and brings alive experiences like gaming, movies, and other applications.

The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor and packs a huge 8 GB of RAM. It comes with 128 GB of internal storage, which is expandable. It has a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display and new five-magnet speakers and ships with Android Nougat out-of-the-box. It packs a 3,300mAh battery with Quick Charging support.

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