Asus Tango-powered ZenFone AR review: good camera, nice screen, but annoyingly bad battery life and Tango disappoints with a pathetically small number of apps
Google has partnered with another manufacturer to produce a phone with Tango on board, for better or for worse.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second Tango phone to get a full review, and the arc so far is consistent: Lenovo's Phab 2 Pro showed promise with a small but compelling AR library while being mediocre as a daily driver, and ASUS then built the 5.7-inch ZenFone AR around Tango plus Daydream after Qualcomm's accidental CES leak put the spec sheet out early.
Ahead of the US launch, Engadget counted only about 50 Tango apps running stably on the device. Android Police's verdict now closes the loop: the camera and screen deliver, but battery life annoys and the app catalog is still pathetically small — meaning two handsets in, the bottleneck is Google's software ecosystem, not partner hardware.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing between the Phab 2 Pro and the ZenFone AR face the same tradeoff twice: capable AR hardware paired with a daily-driver compromise — battery drain here, general mediocrity there.
- The 'pathetically small number of apps' finding lands on Google's developer pitch as much as on Asus's device, since the ~50-app stable catalog was already known before launch.
Second-order effects
- Asus is carrying two unproven Google platforms at once — Tango and Daydream — on one Snapdragon 821 phone, making battery life the price of the dual bet and raising the bar for whichever OEM signs on next.
- Developers watching two flagship-class Tango phones sell into a thin catalog have little revenue case to build AR-first apps, which deepens the very shortage reviewers keep flagging.
Third-order effects
- If every Tango handset repeats the pattern of good silicon and a starving app shelf, Google's lever shifts from recruiting more OEMs to fixing the supply-side problem itself — consolidation or subsidy of the app ecosystem becomes the make-or-break move.
- The long view from the 2023 Zenfone 10 review is telling: Asus's later compact flagship is judged on exactly the axes the ZenFone AR failed — battery life and software commitment — suggesting the daily-driver fundamentals outlasted the AR experiment.
The trend: Google's experimental mobile platforms depend on partner hardware to prove them, and two Tango phones in, the binding constraint has moved from sensors and specs to the size of the app catalog.