Google launched their prototype Project Tango tablet around a year ago, selling it to interested developers through an invite-only system for $1,024. Now the company is opening up sales to anyone through the Google Store, dropping the price of the developer-oriented tablet to $512.
The Project Tango tablet is a 7-inch device with a 1080p display on the front, and an Nvidia Tegra K1 SoC inside featuring two custom 64-bit capable 'Denver' CPU cores and a 192-core Kepler GPU. The tablet is also loaded with 4 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage, which is still firmly high-end for a tablet in 2015.
The key feature of Google's Project Tango tablet is the Kinect-like camera array on the back, which is able to track and map 3D landscapes and objects in front of it. The system consists of a regular 4-megapixel camera with 2.0-micron pixels for high sensitivity, a secondary camera with a 170-angle field of view, and a infrared depth sensor.
The inclusion of the 3D camera allows developers to create awesome applications that allow the tablet to interface with real-world environments. There's hope that this type of technology will eventually be ubiquitous among tablets, but we're still quite a way off at this stage.
If you're interested in experimenting with 3D mapping and tracking, the Project Tango tablet can be ordered now from the Google Store.