Lenovo is making the first consumer phone with Google's Project Tango.
Those who think that the future of smartphones and privacy is being decided in the current Apple-FBI encryption controversy may be missing the real boat.
First of all, governments can not permit the existence of technology which hides evidence forever from law enforcement agencies when people's survival may depend on being able to obtain access to hidden information. We have no doubt that the controversy will be resolved in the interest of society generally.
Secondly, as far as the future of smartphones is concerned, Apple, Inc. has much more to be worried about in the coming advance of technologies such as Google's Project Tango, which will be released in a Lenovo smartphone this summer, implementing new 3D mapping technology for consumers that was already on display in Barcelona in February and which will revolutionize the way that people use smartphones to interact with their world.
See e.g. the YouTube video at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBIjo8Tsn4s.
The Lenovo Project Tango page writes as follows at Coming Summer 2016! The World's First Project Tango-Powered Smartphone:
"Google's Project Tango and Lenovo are partnering to create the world's first smartphone powered by Project Tango technology. The device, which will allow users to experience the world in ways never before possible through a smartphone, will launch in Summer 2016. Watch this space for the latest from Mobile World Congress and beyond on new Project Tango experiences and details on the coming device!"Project Tango involves the convergence of many new "locational", "navigational", "sonar" and "mapping" technologies -- also such as have just been introduced in consumer drone technology and about which we have been posting.
We have not been writing about drones for nothing and perhaps there is a connection to our publications about ancient mapping systems, e.g. Sky Earth Native America (see Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) and Stars Stones and Scholars.
It was Giordano Bruno who reportedly stated that "if the world has no beginning or end, then where are we?"
That concern for "our location" has been a guiding question of humanity from its very inception, and it guides the rationale for much of science and religion, which try to answer the question of "WHERE ARE WE?" Indeed, the common orientation of ancient and modern systems of mapping and navigation is the aim to "help everything and everyone understand where they are".
Project Tango as implemented in smartphones will lead to unprecedented new possibilities in this regard.
See the following YouTube videos: