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Asus Zenfone 2 is a striking flagship device with up to 4GB RAM from $199!

Robin MaxwellJanuary 5, 2015

It isn’t often we see the words ‘Asus’, ‘flagship’ and ‘striking’ together, but the new Asus Zenfone 2 certainly warrants the headline!

Off the bat the Asus Zenfone 2 looks better than anything the company have produced in the fast few years. The polished metal chassis looks premium and the rear mounted controls bring images of the LG G3 to mind.

It’s not just in the looks department where the Zenfone comes up trumps though, specifications for this surprisingly affordable beast are very very impressive too! Up front there’s a 5.5-inch 1080 FHD display with Corning Gorilla Glass and above that a 5 mega-pixel camera with F2.0 aperture and 85 degree wide-angle lens sit. The front camera app even has a selfie panorama mode which would come in handy when at a Chinese restaurant with rotating table!

Around the back a 13 mega-pixel F2.0 rear camera sits in wait for your next photo op with dual LED flash to brighten up night images. Asus have also given the Zenfine 2 some nice pixel enhancing technology to boost HDR performance and general low light photography.

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Continuing with the specs, Asus have followed Lenovo with a 64bit Intel Atom processor running at either 1.8Ghz or 2.3Ghz depending on the model you choose to buy. The amount of RAM also changes depending on your choice from a standard 2GB to an amazing 4GB RAM!

Other features include micro SD card memory expansion, LTE, 3000mAh battery and even Android 5.0 Lollipop!

Pricing is amazing too with the base model 16GB memory, 2GB RAM Asus Zenfone 2 costing only $199! Pricing of other options will be announced soon!

What do you think of the Asus Zenfone? Looks like a killer to us!

Disclaimer: We may be compensated by some of the companies whose products we talk about, but our articles and reviews are always our honest opinions. For more details, you can check out our editorial guidelines and learn about how we use affiliate links.

About the author
Robin Maxwell
Hi, Robin Maxwell here! Mobile technology is my passions, and while I've been known to dabble with iOS devices I'm a firm Android convert, currently waiting for the Oppo Find 5 to launch!!

64bits and battery autonomy is 2015 war (hardware)

realjjj
January 5, 2015
Do factor in that the cheaper one is with the slower SoC and it’s not quite as fast as Asus claims.
The 145-160 China phones might be a better deal, we’ll have to see benchmarks including gaming( the Asus should win in gaming) And there is a high clocked Mediatek arriving soon that should compete with the faster SoC here.
Anyway great offer for a non-China brand and Asus will sell lots.
They will most likely jack up prices for the better models, don’t dare to hope those will be good value but the basic model is not bad at all.
- Lazar Prodanovic
  January 6, 2015
  Hire you go in dept SoC spec with performance metrics: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7789/intel-talks-merrifield-moorefild-and-lte-at-mwc-2014
  I just hope they did go with XMM7260 LTE CAT6 modem instead of XMM7160 CAT4 as XMM7160 is based on 40nm old lithography (XMM7260 28nm) & would be a bad solution battery wise. I hope that’s an error in official spec as this SoC is anyway intended to go with XMM7260 in a first place. We all know Asus it will be straight ahead world wide (XMM7260 have 21 programmable bands), Asus is also prompt with kernel sources & they pretty much arrested all flowsZenphone 1 had. We know price of basic model Z3560 with 2Gb RAM & 16GB storage (190-200$ US, 190-200€ EU), what we don’t know is how much other options will cost. For me upper tolerable price is around 250$-€ for Z3580 4GB & 32GB & it will be pretty much future proof & nice to play with ROM’s & development so it’s a really good bay. Compared to MT7652 the Z3580 is little to much faster in CPU performance (depending on MP) in real use it should be much faster especially in Web browsing (faster even from A57 cores). It’s generally faster than cortex A15-A17 & slower than A57 but in a small margins. Concerning GPU; its a little faster than original A7 cyclone SoC one or 91.6% faster than MALI T760 MP2 & 90% faster than A405, not to mention how Power VR (Imagination) drivers are far better than ARM’s. Unfortunate thing is Imagination is not supporting Linux in any way & Power VR GPUs are not supported & are heated by community so their will not be Ubuntu phone or anything like it at all.

Greehla
January 5, 2015
Intel is still underdog in mobile CPU:s. That architecture cant compete against ARM in terms of computing / power efficiency. Its also a truth, that not every application in play store even support these exotic intel processors, sad, but true.
- I have seen stupid twats in my life but none are as blinded…
  Android Lollipop for 64bit processors was developed by Google using guess what???
  Intel Atom Z3580.
  Why? Because none of the ARM licenced manufacturers could supply a 64bit processor ON TIME.
  Then you can see ARM devices running Lollipop crashing like hell and you fool came here to post blatant stupid trash.
  Apps run under ART virtual machine if they are optimized for ART then they will run better on a 22nm singlecore Intel chip than your old ARM endless-core trash.
  Get out of my fucking way
  - Greehla
    January 5, 2015
    - Angry Mobile Nerd
      January 5, 2015
      - Greehla
        January 5, 2015
        I think the point was not about lollipop, but the efficiency of processor. Even the latest ones cant carry even idle times without excessive battery drain. Of course Intel haves enough money to pour for every kind of development and enough money to make everything to seem like lucrative enough for every company they choose. Also that wasnt the point I was aiming to. the point is, that a company like Asus, which I have noticed with previous models, whose I have used, there have been systematically dissapointing uncompatibility in software, if tried to get it from play store. Its because compiling to the x86 architecture is not so often used in android based scene. I hope, that would change, but before that, I cant recommend Intel based phones to anyone.
        
        Fred
        January 6, 2015
        Can you remember which software was incompatible, because so far no Zenphone user reported that lately?
        Greehla
        January 6, 2015
        Greehla
        January 6, 2015
        The problem is that Intel doesnt have big enough marketshare for developers to really intrest in making software in native code for these processors. That is a serious fallback, which for me, is enough to not buy Intel based android machines at a time being.
        
        jomla
        January 6, 2015
        its up to intel and others who involved in making phones and optimizing android software to work on dalvik or art to improve performance
        
        oc
        January 6, 2015
        Intel and Asus had been working ALONE on optimizing Android for 64bit Bailtrail chips since 2013…Their Memotab and Transformer tablets running Android and Intel 22Nm Atom processors are examples of that…
        When Google launched official support under Android L, Intel was up there providing not only hardware but sharing data with Google coders.
        While ARM manufacturers were still peeing in their pants watching how to fit ARMv8 into 28Nm…
        Airyl
        January 8, 2015
        Is it impossible to just like one party without dissing another?
        jomla
        January 6, 2015
        you got no idea what you are talking about regarding architectural incompatibility.
        applications run in virtual machine (dalvik, art), that means they are can run on anything that is capable to run those virtual machines.
        if device is running android it is running VM, apps got no clue what they are running on and dont have to
  - David Košič
    January 6, 2015
    And yet the new nexus devices were released with Qualcomm and nvidia chips?
    Shouldn’t that say something about what Google thinks about the current Intel mobile chips?

Kent
January 5, 2015
If this works on AT&T in the USA then I am interested.
Patrick
January 5, 2015
I am a very happy owner of the first generation Zenfone 5 and I believe that Asus are on the way to launching another winner. I had previously owned two (Zoppo and Inew) China phones. What finally made me turn to the Zenfone were a) Software suppport with regular updates and b) support of 4 WCDMA bands (important for international travel). The new Zenfone 2 ups the ante once again. Dual Sim with support for 14 !!!!! different LTE bands. No other Dual Sim phone I know of comes with these connectivity specs. Aren’t mobile phones after all about being connected (for this they need universal frequency support) on the move and not just glorified GSM/WIFI tablets ?
- thor2001
  January 5, 2015
  Any proof for dualSIM AND 14 LTE-bands?
  Really good hidden:
  Ports …, dual micro-SIM, …
  hm …

- thxforsource
  January 5, 2015
  “64-bit Intel Atom Z3560/Z3580 Quad Core Processor (Running at 1.8/2.3GHz)
  PowerVR Series 6 – G6430, with OpenGL 3.0 support”
  “ZenFone 2
  is powered by an up to 2.3 GHz 64-bit Intel Atom processor Z3580 and
  has 4 GB RAM to deliver up to seven times (7X)* faster gaming
  performance than its predecessor”
  “Tested by AndEBench to be compared
  with ZenFone 5 (Intel Clover Trail+ Platform).”
  But: 170grams! 😉
- Lazar Prodanovic
  January 6, 2015
Simon
January 5, 2015
- David Košič
  January 5, 2015
  The fully specked one probably is.
- Greehla
  January 5, 2015
  I think not. Honor 6 (all variants, but H60-L04 (the international one)) has EMUI 3.0, which is a great alternative for Xiaomi´s MIUI. Both of them are great (latter one is better). This can be debated also, because everyone haves their own opinion which one is better than another.
  - Airyl
    January 6, 2015
    In terms of UI, I’d honestly say that Zen UI is lighter, faster and snappier than MIUI or EmUI.
    - Fred
      January 6, 2015
      I had tested both, IMO MIUI is better in terms of customization and usability, but really buggy compare to Zen UI. Maybe because MIUI ROM is designed for too many devices made by too many manufacturers,
BotondKisKovacs
January 5, 2015
Steve B
January 5, 2015
If the cameras are good we might have a meeting in the future

Fred
January 5, 2015
I don’ t like to stick with a brand, but I will stay with Asus for this year.
I bought the Zenphone 6, as I was on a budget, and since day 1 I was really impressed by the quality you get for 200$. Excepted the camera in low light and the bug when you are recording in HD, nothing is wrong with this phone. Also it should be emphasized that Asus is constantly updating the software and the apps which clearly show that “they care”.
If they had put a pen in this new phone with multitasking screen with a similar price… IMO they would kill all competition.

Akimitsui
January 6, 2015
If I can install MIUI on this then I’ll swap this for my current Mi4
- Fred
  January 6, 2015
  No you can’t install MIUI on this. And honestly after tried the Zen UI, you won’t miss MIUI that much
Yeti hand
January 6, 2015
jiayu s3, elephone p7000, xiami note, asus now I don’t care anymore, who come first take my money first, just launch the damned phones already
- ARUN SUBRAMANIAN
  January 6, 2015