ASUS ZenFone 2 announced, offers 5.5-inch display with Android 5.0 and more

BY Evan Selleck

Published 5 Jan 2015

image ASUS ZenFone 2

While LG has already made waves with the announcement of its G Flex 2, ASUS has made its own announcement in an attempt not to be outdone by the Life’s Good crew.

ASUS on Monday, January 5, officially announced the ZenFone 2, which, at least on paper, looks to be a remarkable step up from the first generation ZenFone. As the image above shows, the new device from ASUS looks sleeker and simply more refined, with a brushed metal aesthetic. The specifications sheet for the ZenFone 2 is equally just as impressive, beginning with the 13-megapixel camera on the back, which boasts an f/2.0 aperture, and ASUS says it also offers zero shutter lag. ASUS says it also produces the “best HDR photography,” along with dual tone, real color flash that aims to make photos look more realistic even when the flash is needed.

The other tentpole feature of the ZenPhone 2 is the processor inside. As made evident from the branding on the back of the handset, there’s an Intel processor under the hood. ASUS used the 64-bit Atom Z3580 quad-core processor, which is clocked at 2.3GHz. On top of that, though, ASUS is also including a variant of the ZenPhone 2 with 4GB of RAM. The standard version will apparently offer 2GB of RAM.

As far as the other features go, the ZenPhone 2 will host Android 5.0 Lollipop right out of the box, underneath ASUS’s proprietary user interface, which it is calling “ZenUI.” The display measures in at 5.5-inches, and offers a 1080p HD IPS panel. There’s a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, too, and it will have 4G LTE-connectivity, too. There’s a 3000mAh battery under the hood, too.

ASUS says the 2GB of RAM variant, which also features an Intel Atom Z3560 processor, will launch in March for $199 unsubsidized. As far as the higher-specifications model goes, that’s unknown at the time of this writing.

[via Engadget]