Asus may have a new Zenfone on the way. An unannounced 5.2 inch Asus smartphone showed up at the TENAA website recently. That’s China’s equivalent of the FCC… except that Chinese wireless regulators have a habit of publishing more photos and specs of phones.

The most noteworthy thing about this new phone is probably the massive battery: it packs a 4,850 mAh battery, which is nearly twice the size of the batteries found in some other phones with similar-sized displays.

My Nexus 5X smartphone, for instance, has a 2,700 mAh battery.

According to the TENAA listing, the Asus smartphone will be available with between 2GB and 4GB of RAM, between 16GB and 64GB of storage, and with 13MP rear and 8MP front cameras. The smartphone is powered by an unspecified 1.5 GHz octa-core processor, has a home button with a built-in fingerprint sensor, and runs Android 7.0 Nougat software.

While all those specs paint a picture of a decent smartphone, there’s reason to think this will be a budget, or mid-range device: it’s said to have a 1280 x 720 pixel display. But the relatively low resolution screen combined with the big battery could lead to extra-long battery life.

While the phone has a big battery, it’s not a particularly big phone. It measures about 0.35 inches thick and weighs about 6 ounces.

There’s no word on if or when this phone will be available outside of China, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Asus unveil it at the company’s CES press event next week.

via GSM Arena

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13 replies on “Asus smartphone with octa-core CPU, 4,850 mAh battery on the way”

  1. It’s not coming to CES. It’s low end and likely a Pegasus model. It’s low low end. Honestly. This looks event worthy unveiling product?

  2. I purchased 6 Asus tablets as Christmas presents for family members at the behest of my sister in law last year. Some stopped months after purchase and were returned and fixed under warranty. They broke again. 1 year later, none of them work. None.

    Suffice it to say, some of my rep died along with those tablets, as my sil had asked me “what’s the best of the cheap tablets I can get?” and Asus was my response. If I could do it over, I’d probably recommend Insignia since those seem pretty solid. Anyway, too little, too late. I don’t know what happened but Asus really messed up there.

    I’m now wary of the brand when it comes to phones and tablets. Anyone else with anecdotal evidence for or vs. buying Asus tablets or phones? The tablets I got weren’t Zenpads, they were Memopads I think, dirt cheap from Microcenter (by dirt cheap I mean ~$60) which was cheap for “good” Android tablets last year.

    1. I’m responding to your comment from an ASUS PadFone 2 (A68), a late 2012 phone with a 720p screen, 2GBs of RAM & 64GBs of storage.

      Even though it never got official updates past Android 4.4, the hardware itself has been rock solid ever since, and not even the original headset or charging-/data-cable needed replacing till now.

      My guess is that you experienced a typical “you get what you pay for” situation, as 60 bucks seems too cheap to reasonably expect quality tech. I mean, heck… that’s less than some no-name chinese import tablets cost.

      1. Don’t worry Optimist Prime, Neoprimal is just being a Negatron.

        However, you really have to get some hands-on these devices to see how they hold up.
        I tried a cheap Elephone once and was pleasantly surprised at its quality.
        I later tried a more expensive Chinese Lenovo phone which was bad quality all-over, and worse.
        So it makes little sense to buy so many units of the same product, before handling it, only to complain afterwards.

        1. I’m not complaining. My brand confidence has been shaken, that’s all. A brand whether selling something cheap or expensive, should at least hold up in terms of the item working vs. not working especially over a short period of time.

          I’m not talking about physical faults that made them stop, they literally all just died in strange fashion, whether by bootloop, doesn’t turn on anymore for whatever reason, doesn’t charge, etc. 5 of the 6 were sent for fixes, fixed and then within 3 months, failed again. This is massive failure within a short term.

          I’d love to have recommended something I tested, like Fire Tablets. I know that these are cheap, strong and keep on ticking. I could not recommend them because being gifts for various family members, I wasn’t sure if they would be easily connected to Amazon accounts, etc. I am not familiar with cheap tablets otherwise, so my recommendation was based on 1. brand confidence and 2. price.

          It’s not like I purchased 6 of some no name tablet here. Then I think, the blame would fall squarely on me. I suppose it does either way. I come from an era where you back the brand you believe in and Asus let me down on this one.

          1. Well, you’re reputation went down with your gifts and its completely your fault. You don’t seem to understand the concept of an “open market”.

            That’s why you can’t simply buy or recommend products (or services) without doing your research. It’s nothing new really, its just that with the social internet, information is so much easily spread these days.

            In the past some companies did stick to quality products, but the market changed and they didn’t evolve and had to rely on their previous glories to stay afloat. Just as SONY, or Nokia, or Blackberry…. neither adapted.

            So you as a consumer should also adapt, and do some research before making purchases. Just because an item is expensive, or comes from a reputable company doesn’t mean its a quality product.
            That is the case now, and that’s always been the case.

            As I said, the only thing that has changed is consumers who now have more power and information than the past. As harsh as that sounds, I now this, and have also suffered from no-research in the past. Having a smartphone and 3G in your pocket has changed many things for many people.

    2. I’m responding on a 3yrs old Asus Nexus 7. My next tablet probably will be a Huawei… They appear to be working hard to establish a good reputation.

    3. No personal experience here aside from a Nexus 7 2013 in the house. That seems fine, but Google has its name on it. I have heard a lot of major complaints about the Zenfone 2.

    4. Yes, I guess you get what you pay for. OTOH, I just replaced my ASUS tf300t tablet (about $300 circa 2011) with an ASUS ZenPad 3 s10 (about $300). Not that I had too, the tf300t was still going fine, rooted and running a custom ROM of Android 7, but I noted a fairly marked loss of battery life due to age, and the Tegra 3 chip just wasn’t showing well compared to the performance of more modern devices. My point is that I had zero issues with the old tablet, other than the lack of security updates which I obtained through the custom ROM. Hardware-wise it still works fine. It is no longer my daily device, but I utilize it as a secondary device connected to a secondary TV in the basement. So do not write off ASUS due to this poor experience, but realize you possibly reached to far under the performance bar with your choice.

    5. Thanks for all the responses, and many of you are spot on. You do get what you pay for. I thought however that brand is brand, a cheap tablet from Asus should still at least work, imho. It’s not like a cheap no-name tablet from who-knows-where. Do you know what I mean? I felt confidence in recommending Asus from a brand perspective. They contained Intel processors and actually worked well when they did work, they had some pep to their step. I have $50 Amazon Fire tablets myself that work perfectly, after all and my 2 year old son’s Fire Tablet has endured drops in the 20s I’m sure.

      This is why I wondered about the brand as a total in reference to phones and tablets. I too have a Nexus 7 2013, it died once and went through repair under warranty and has worked fine since. I’m looking into a Zenfone 3 for my wife – it’s either that or a Oneplus 3T and again, this is why I was curious as to how the brand was holding up.

      Anyway, thanks again 🙂 Perhaps I won’t write the brand off at the moment. I do own an Asus motherboard, video card, etc.

    1. Good luck bringing your own phone to a CDMA carrier in the US though.

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