Asus just launched a new smartphone in Taiwan and aside from the fact that it’s got 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, the Asus Zenfone Ares looks kind of outdated.

It also looks kind of familiar: as GSM Arena notes, the new smartphone has a design and spec sheet that closely resembles last year’s Zenfone AR.

The good news is that it appears to be much cheaper: the Asus Zenfone Ares is up for order in Taiwan for about $333.

The smartphone features a 5.7 inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel AMOLED display, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, UFS 2.0 storage, and a 3,300 mAh battery.

It features a microSD card reader, Qick Charge 3.0 support, 7.1 channel audio, 802.11ac WiFi, and

Like the Zenfone AR, the Ares has a special rear camera setup that lets you snap 23MP photos, but which also supports depth and motion sensing technology for augmented reality.

Unfortunately Google has largely abandoned the Project Tango platform that this hardware was designed to support. Instead the company is focusing on its ARCore platform which brings augmented reality to a wider range of devices since it doesn’t rely on depth-sensing cameras.

So maybe the Zenfone Ares isn’t really a new Asus smartphone at all. Maybe it’s just the company’s attempt to clear our remaining inventory by slapping a new name on an old phone and lowering the price tag.

There’s no word on if or when the Zenfone Ares will be available outside of Taiwan.

via Dealntech and ZenFone.org

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3 replies on “Asus launches Zenfone Ares with Snapdragon 821, 8GB RAM for some reason”

  1. The 821 is still appreciably faster then the 630s that they put in most of the midrange phones these days. If it comes to the US for under $400, it’ll be worth a look.

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