Before the local launch of the Zenfone 3, ASUS is first releasing their new family of smartphones in their home country of Taiwan first. Yesterday saw them officially release the Zenfone 3, Zenfone 3 Ultra and Zenfone 3 Deluxe in Taiwan, and with them local pricing that will become a yardstick for the phone’s official pricing once they arrive on our shores.
ASUS Zenfone 3 Deluxe specs
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor/Snapdragon 821 processor
- 4GB/6GB of RAM
- 5.7-inch full HD AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass protection, 1920 x 1080 resolution
- 32GB/64GB/128GB storage, expandable via microSD card
- 23-megapixe rear camera, Sony IMX318 sensor, 6-element lens, laser AF, PDAF
- 8-megapixel front facing camera
- Dual SIM
- 3G, LTE
- WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, A-GPS, USB Type-C, Fingerprint scanner
- Android 6.0 Marshmallow, ZenUI 3.0
- 3000mAh battery
While there’s no surprises for the Zenfone 3 and the Zenfone 3 Ultra as far as specs go, there’s one little surprise for the Zenfone 3 Deluxe – apparently the top of the line model of the new device comes with Qualcomm’s newest Snapdragon chip, the Snapdragon 821, instead of the Snapdragon 820 SoC that the other two Zenfone 3 Deluxe variants get.
To recap, there’s three versions of the Zenfone 3 Deluxe – a 32GB/4GB, 64GB/6GB and a top end 256GB/6GB. The new processor brings a slightly higher clock speed at 2.4GHz and an Adreno 530 GPU.
Aside from the slight processor bump, all of the variants of the Zenfone 3 Deluxe get the same specs overall: 5.7-inch full HD AMOLED display with Gorilla Glass protection, 23-megapixe, Sony IMX318 rear camera with laser AF and PDAF, USB Type-C, fingerprint scanner and Android 6.0 Marshmallow.
As far as pricing goes ASUS has pegged the price of the base model Zenfone 3 Deluxe at $500, or Php 23.6K while the 64GB/6GB version is priced at Php 26.4K. The top-of-the-line, Snapdragon 821 toting, 128GB/6GB version is set to retail for $780, or around Php 36.8K. Just remember this is the direct conversion of the prices as launched in Taiwan – PH pricing may be a little different because of importation taxes and freight.
