ZenFone Retrospective: A Look Back Before Moving Forward

Welcome to our Zenfone Retrospective!

Today, Asus is launching the newest iteration of their smartphone line — the Zenfone 4. While we’re eager to officially learn what the Taiwanese company has got in store for us, or at least how much they’re actually going to be priced since there have been a ton of leaks for the devices already, we thought it would be a good time to take a look back at some of the smartphones that help put them on the map.

First, there was the 5

If you’re relatively new to the tech scene and find yourself scratching your head as to why the retrospective is starting with the Asus Zenfone 5, we can’t really blame you for the confusion because even we were wondering what would happen when the Taiwanese company would do with their naming conventions when we got to this point and I guess we’re going to find out next year.

In a time where Samsung and Apple dominated the scene, it was the Asus Zenfone 5 that helped lay the foundation for the company’s entry into the mobile arena. Released in 2014, it has a 5-inch HD display with an Intel Atom processor running the show. Back then 2GB of RAM was more than enough for what we needed our phones to do and we thought that 8GB of storage would last us a lifetime; simpler times, yes?

The Bang-For-Your-Buck Zenfone 2

While the Zenfone 5 laid the groundwork, it was the Asus Zenfone 2 that really put them on the map. Aside from Xiaomi’s offerings, this was probably the best phone that you could get in 2015 that didn’t cost an arm and a leg.

The top-of-the-line model, ZE551ML, had a 64-bit Intel Atom 2.3GHz Z3580 quad-core processor. It was also one of the cheapest phones in 2015 to have 4GB of RAM at around Php 15,000. This was also the year that we were introduced to the other variants of the Zenfone, such as the Zenfone Max, the Zenfone Zoom, the Zenfone 2 Laser, and the Zenfone 2 Deluxe.

The Departure from Intel with the Asus Zenfone 3

The Asus Zenfone 2 was a great smartphone at that time, but its SoC did run into problems with a couple of apps that just didn’t want to run on the Intel-based platform. The Asus Zenfone 3 saw the company’s departure from using Intel chipsets to something we were more accustomed to seeing: Qualcomm Snapdragon and MediaTek processors. Asus also made the pivot to focus on making their phones some of the best mobile shooters around and even introduced their first dual camera equipped phone later in 2016, which was the new iteration of the Zenfone Zoom.

We can’t forget the reaction when the Taiwanese brand announced its pricing since it was a few thousand pesos more expensive than what they had previously offered a year ago.

What can we expect from later today?

Well, there has already been a series of leaks plus a few confirmed details about the phones already, so we pretty much know what these phones will be packing in terms of hardware; we just need them to officially confirm them at this point or they could be throwing us a curve ball or two. It’s the pricing that we’re really interested about and John has already written an opinion piece about why the Taiwanese company has to price their devices correctly. Yes, there have been leaks for the pricing for some or most of the phones, but we’ll hold out for the announcement.

What we do know for sure is that you guys should stay tuned to the site for all the announcements coming your way and we’ll give our quick reviews for the newly released phones as well.

For now, read on!

Read: The ASUS ZenFone 4 Family: All We Know