ASUS Announces Latest Phone Flagship In The Zenfone 8 Series
For this year's ZenFone series, Asus is taking a subtly different approach. With its big screen and flip-out camera mechanism, the ZenFone 8 Flip looks a lot like previous year's models, but the company went back to the drawing board for the flagship ZenFone 8 and revamped it as a smaller one-hand-friendly handset, similar to an Android iPhone mini.
The Asus Zenfone 8 scales 169g and measures 148x68.5x8.9 mm. It is bigger than the Sony Xperia 5 III, but not as compact as the iPhone 12 mini. They are powered by the flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset, which runs Android 11 with ZenUI 8, a "mindful upgrade over stock Android," according to Asus.
The Zenfone 8 uses a 5.9-inch Samsung AMOLED touchscreen with 1080p resolution and a 20:9 aspect ratio, while the Zenfone 8 Flip uses a much larger 6.67-inch display. The handset has Gorilla Glass Victus on the front and an IP68 dust and water resistance rating.
The screen has a refresh rate of 120Hz and a contact sampling rate of 240Hz. It's HDR10+ approved, offers 112 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut covered, and is color-calibrated. It's also very bright, with full intensity of 1,100 nits. The fingerprint reader is integrated into the screen.
On the rear, there's a dual camera with a 64MP sensor - the same IMX686 as the Zenfone 7 series. There are 0.8 million pixels, a Quad Bayer filter, and Dual Pixel Autofocus on this camera.
This camera has Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) and can shoot 8K video at 24 frames per second, with Electronic Image Stabilization available. With HyperSteady, 4K/60 fps is also available, as is 1080p/60 fps. OZO Audio Zoom and Noise Suppression technology are used in the triple mic setup.
The flip-out camera array is, of course, the main attraction. A 64-megapixel main camera, a 12-megapixel ultrawide camera, and an 8-megapixel telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom found on the Zenfone 8 Flip are all borrowed from the ZenFone 7. The module itself has a stronger motor with greater stamina, allowing users to get up to 300,000 "flips."
The ZenFone 8 and ZenFone 8 Flip made their global debut, with the ZenFone 8 costing €599 and the ZenFone 8 Flip costing €799. Only the ZenFone 8 will be making it to North America, according to Asus, and it will be released this summer. The price in the United States is still being determined, but the company estimates that it would range between $599 and $799.
Watch the full announcement in the ASUS Zenfone 8 series Launch Event replay video.
