Asus, as promised, has revealed the availability details of the ZenFone range of smartphones. At an event in Taiwan on Tuesday, the company also unveiled a new ZenFone 3 Deluxe variant which will be the first commercial smartphone featuring the brand new Qualcomm Snapdragon 821. The Taiwanese company also unveiled the ZenPad 3S 10 (Z500M) tablet.
The all-new Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe has been priced at TWD 24,990 (approximately Rs. 52,000) and will go on sale later this year. Other ZenFone 3 Deluxe variants featuring Snapdragon 820 will go on sale early next month in Taiwan. No word on other markets as of now. Asus confirmed that ZenFone 3 is now available in Taiwan while the ZenFone 3 Ultra is up for pre-orders and is expected to be available by end of this month.
Apart from the Snapdragon 821 SoC, the new ZenFone 3 Deluxe also packs massive 256GB of built-in storage. Rest of the specifications of the new ZenFone 3 is identical to the ‘regular’ ZenFone 3 Deluxe models. It features a 5.7-inch full-HD Super Amoled display and packs a whopping 6GB of RAM and supports expandable storage via microSD card (up to 128GB). The rear camera sports a 23-megapixel Sony sensor with 4K video support and also packs an 8-megapixel front camera. There is 3000mAh battery on board. It measures 156.4×77.4×7.5mm and runs Asus Zen UI based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
Additionally, there’s a ZenFone 3 Deluxe variant with 4GB RAM and 32GB storage as well.
Apart from the new ZenFone 3 Deluxe, Asus on Tuesday also launched the ZenPad 3S 10 (Z500M) tablet featuring a 9.7-inch LCD display with a screen resolution of 2048×1536 pixels. The tablet packs 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. It supports expandable storage via microSD card. There is an 8-megapixel rear camera and a 5-megapixel front camera. The tablet runs Asus Zen UI on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. It is powered by a hexa-core MediaTek (MT8176) processor clocked at 1.7GHz and also sports a fingerprint scanner. According to Engadget, the Asus ZenPad 3S 10 (Z500M) has been reportedly priced at TWD 10,990 (approximately Rs. 23,000). It is expected to go on sale in August.
Asus at the global launch in May had revealed pricing of the some ZenFone 3 models, the Asus ZenFone 3 (ZE552KL) was priced starting at $249 (roughly Rs. 16,800), the Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe (ZS570KL) priced at $499 (roughly Rs. 33,600), and the Asus ZenFone 3 Ultra (ZU680KL) priced at $479 (roughly Rs. 32,200).