If it weren’t for Pokémon Go, augmented reality might have stayed another forlorn futurist technology the public paid little attention to. Instead, the AR mobile game from developer Niantic Labs, a former Google subsidiary, catapulted the technology to hundreds of millions of smartphone owners around the world. Now a few months after the game’s launch, the first fully capable AR smartphone has started shipping. It’s Lenovo’s Phab 2 Pro, and under the hood it contains the hardware and software neccesary to use Google’s Tango AR technology.Pokémon Go didn’t accelerate Tango’s consumer timeline, which has been in place since the team began discussions with Lenovo last year. "Actually I think Pokémon Go took everyone by surprise, including Niantic," Tango chief Johnny Lee, who spoke to members of the press at a roundtable event last week, says with a laugh. "Pokemon Go certainly made the conversation a lot easier with partners." partners."