What does $199 buy?
Everybody’s excited about the upcoming Zenfone 2 that our EIC managed to do a hands-on yesterday but apparently the $199 price tag that ASUS Chairman Jonny Shih promised for the device doesn’t apply to the full HD, 5.5-inch display model. No, that price belongs to a lower model that has a 5-inch, HD smartphone that has almost the same specs as the previous Zenfone 5, with a few hardware updates.
While the move is logical (something needs to replace the Zenfone 5 that sits in the Php 6,995 price range) it’s not what consumers have been lead to believe in the days and months after CES. The lower-end 5.5-inch Zenfone 2 with 2GB of RAM and the lower clocked 1.8GHz may retail for more than $199, with the fully decked out Zenfone 2 with 2.3GHz processor and 4GB of RAM may come in just under 15K (or slightly over that). It’s still value for money, but it’s not as affordable as some people are expecting.
Of course a lot of this is just conjecture at this point – everything rests with ASUS as of now and hopefully the company clears up the issue regarding pricing of the new Zenfone 2(s).
