Asus has revealed the price and release date of its latest smartphones, the Zenfone 4 and Zenfone Max.
The Zenfone 4 is a mid-range Android Nougat handset designed to take on the likes of the OnePlus 5. With pricing starting at a modest £450, its headline feature is a super swish dual-camera system that combines a 12-megapixel Sony IMX362 image sensor with a secondary 8-megapixel, 120-degree wide-angle lens.
Related: Asus Zenfone 4 hands-on
Asus claims the camera is significantly better in low light, where it will reportedly take “five times brighter and clearer photos” than competing handsets, like the OnePlus 5 and Honor 9. We here at Trusted Reviews haven’t had time to fully test the camera, but if our opening impressions of the Zenfone 4 are anything to go by, there may be some truth to this claim.
Outside of this, the Zenfone 4 is a pretty by the numbers device, featuring a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 CPU, 4GB of RAM and a bog standard 5.5-inch FHD display. The phone’s set to go up for preorder on October 6 with a shipping date of “early November”.
Asus Zenfone Max battery life and specs
The Zenfone Max is the cheaper of the two phones, with pricing starting at a modest £250. It looks set to be a decent replacement for the discontinued Lenovo P2, which had one of the best battery lives we’d ever seen, thanks to the use of a giant 5000mAh battery.
An Asus spokesman at the event told Trusted Reviews that this cell will last two-to-three days of moderate use off one charge, and even offer 22 hours of video playback.
Overall, however, the Max has slightly lower specs than the Zenfone 4 and will be powered by a less demanding, and much slower, Snapdragon 430 CPU.
Sadly Asus hasn’t announced a UK release date for its top end Zenfone Pro, which got a US release date earlier this week. The phone caught the headlines because of its support for Gigabit LTE, which is also yet to hit the UK.
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Interested in any of the new Zenfones? Let us know in the comments below.