Asus today unveiled its flagship ZenFone handset for 2016: the ZenFone 3 Deluxe. It is the first handset in the world to be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 821 chipset, which was unveiled yesterday by the company.
The ZenFone 3 Deluxe sports a 5.7-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display that is protected by Corning’s Gorilla Glass 4. It also packs in up to 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM and speedy 256GB of UFS 2.0 storage, along with a 3000mAh battery. The rear of the handset houses a 23MP f/2.0 shooter with 4-axis OIS, laser AF sensor, and dual-tone flash, while the front houses a 8MP f/2.0 selfie shooter. Interestingly, the handset also comes with a microSD card slot, fingerprint scanner at the rear, Wi-Fi ac MIMO, NFC, and Bluetooth 4.2.
There is a catch here though: only the highest end variant of the ZenFone 3 Deluxe will be powered by a Snapdragon 821 chipset, with other variants being powered by a Snapdragon 820 chip. The top of the line variant will feature 6GB RAM and 256GB of storage space, and will be priced around $800 range. All variants of the handset have also been certified by Google for its Daydream VR platform.
The base variant of the ZenFone 3 Deluxe will launch in Taiwan and Hong Kong in early August, with the Snapdragon 821 variant expected to arrive next month.
