Asus ZenFone 6 rocks a feature that trumps even the OnePlus 7 Pro

While Asus hasn’t been quite as forthcoming as the likes of Samsung or OnePlus, we gleaned a lot about its 2019 flagship phone just days before launch – now the Asus ZenFone 6 is here and it’s unquestionably an interesting beast.

Like many phone makers over the last couple of years, the focus here seems to have been placed on eliminating the bezels around the display. It’s an increasingly popular trend that, generally speaking, makes for more attractive smartphones; this is certainly the cases with Asus’ new top device.

The ZenFone 6 sports a flat 6.4-inch 19.5:9 aspect ratio Full HD+ IPS LCD panel. Flip the phone over and you’ll find a decidedly clean and unassuming back, hewn from curved Gorilla Glass, with a fingerprint sensor at its centre and a duo of cameras against the top edge. Asus has opted for the same 48-megapixel sensor that so many other phones have suddenly started to sport.

The Honor View 20 was the first phone on the scene to feature it and more recently we’ve seen the Xiaomi Mi 9, OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro all make use of it too.

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In the case of the ZenFone 6, this high-resolution main sensor is accompanied by a secondary 13-megapixel ultra-wide angle sensor that can also be used to gather depth information for portrait mode shooting and the like.

On rival devices that have done away with bezels, the notch, cut-out, hole-punch and pop-up have been used to try and conceal or accommodate a front-facing camera sensor; the ZenFone 6 ignores all of these solutions and instead does a backflip.

When you want to use the phone’s front-facing camera, you don’t, you can’t – there isn’t one. Instead, the back camera(s) are actually mounted in a motorised module that somersaults over the top edge of the phone to face towards the user.

It’s akin to the Samsung Galaxy A80‘s flip-around camera, which also happens to lead with a 48-megapixel main sensor. Unlike the A80, Asus’ mechanism doesn’t require the whole top of the phone to rise up and instead just revolves the dual camera setup to face-forward.

Beyond its party piece, Asus has decked the phone out with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 flagship chipset, up to 8GB of RAM and 256GB of internal storage, plus microSD expandability up to 1TB.

The phone does benefit from a headphone jack and includes DTS Headphone:X support for surround sound. The inclusion of a jack also means you’ll find FM radio support and there are dual front-facing speakers for when you want to share your tunes with your friends.

• Related: OnePlus 7 Pro review

Beyond the eye-catching camera, one other big plus of owning a ZenFone 6 is going to be battery life. The display’s Full HD+ resolution, paired to a whopping 5000mAh fast-charging battery, means this thing trumps the new OnePlus 7 Pro (with its 4000mAh battery) and even the current battery king in the mainstream space, the Huawei P30 Pro (which features a 4200mAh battery).

How much is the Asus ZenFone 6, and where and when can I buy one?

Asus is hoping to ship the Asus ZenFone 6 as of May 25 in select markets all over the world, however, it’s available as of launch (May 16) direct from the Asus eShop. Pricing is slated at €499 for the 6GB/64GB SKU, €559 for the 6GB/128GB variant and €599 for the top-tier 8GB/256GB model.