Taiwanese company, Asus, has just released its latest flagship smartphone, Asus Zenfone 6. The company was able to do something that the industry craves for, innovation, by using a 180° flip panel to the dual cameras of this phone. Overall, the design and appearance of this smartphone is not short of a 2019 flagship and considering its €500 ($559) price tag, this device is a flagship to look out for.
The Asus Zenfone 6 comes with a 6.4” IPS LCD with a 1080 x 2340 and a 92% screen to body ratio. This phone uses a dual glass design. The front is made of a Corning Gorilla Glass 6, the rear also uses a Corning glass while the middle frame is a 6000-series aluminum. Asus probably opted for an LCD display as well as a rear fingerprint sensor to keep the price of this flagship in check. Under the hood, we have the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC coupled with up to 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of UFS 2.1 internal storage.
In the camera department, Asus became the first company to try out a motorized rotating dual camera which has a 48MP Sony IMX586 sensor and a 13MP shooter. This is a cool mechanism because these are the only sensors that the phone needs. For selfies, the 180° flip mechanism pull the rear camera forward so it can be used as a selfie camera. The camera supports 4K videos at 60fps, HDR+ Enhanced and Night Mode.
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Asus Zenfone 6 Specifications
- Body: Aluminum frame, Gorilla Glass back, 159.1×75.4×9.2mm, 190g; Midnight Black and Twilight Silver color schemes.
- Display: 6.4″ IPS LCD, 1080x2340px, 19.5:9 aspect ratio, 403ppi, Gorilla Glass 6.
- Camera: Motorized rotating dual camera assembly. Main module: 48MP, 1/2.0″ SONY IMX586 Quad Bayer sensor, f/1.79 aperture, 79-degree FOV (26mm equiv. focal length), laser/PDAF, OIS. Ultra wide module: 13MP, f/2.4 aperture, 125-degree FOV (11mm equiv. focal length), fixed focus. Dual LED flash.
- Video recording: Up to 4K 2160p@60fps with EIS on the main cam, up to 4K@30fps with EIS on the ultra wide, slow-motion up to 1080p@240fps or 720p@480fps (only on the main cam).
- OS/Software: Android 9.0 Pie, ZenUI 6.
- Chipset: Snapdragon 855 (7nm): octa-core CPU (1×2.8GHz & 3×2.4GHz Kryo Gold & 4×1.7GHz Kryo 485 Silver); Adreno 640 GPU.
- Memory: Up to 8GB RAM, up to 256GB UFS 2.1 storage, dedicated microSD card slot.
- Battery: 5,000mAh capacity, 18W QuickCharge 4.0 fast charging, 10W reverse charging.
- Connectivity: Dual-SIM; LTE-A, 6-Band carrier aggregation, Cat.18 (1.2Gbps/150Mbps); Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac/ax MU-MIMO; GPS, GLONASS, Beidou, Galileo; NFC; Bluetooth 5.0; FM radio. USB Type-C, 3.5mm jack.
- Misc: Rear-mounted capacitive fingerprint sensor, stereo speakers.
The lights of this smartphone are kept on by a 5,000 mAh battery which supports 18W fast charge. Though the device uses a glass rear, it does not support wireless charging. On the software end, Asus integrated the ZenUI 6 based on Android 9 Pie on this one. The Android Q is not quite ready as it is still in the beta stage but Asus has promised to make an upgrade available.
This smartphone will hit the market on May 23. It will start from Europe for €500 and will be available on Asus.com and other retail partners.
A little bit disappointing to see an IPS LCD display instead off an AMOLED. There doesn’t appear to be any mentioned of minimum number of operations on the camera flip mechanism. Nice to see then try something different, but it does look more fragile than the pop up camera mechanisms.
For me it’s nice because I don’t really like taking selfies to the mechanism will barely be used.
I also really like the 5000 mAh battery which is unique for a high end phone as most top out at 4000 or even below.
I perfectly agree with you…Yes, the rotating flip may be prone to some issues but then, if it gets bad, you only lose the selfie camera and can still get selfies the good old way where you just snap the selfie without seeing what you snapping (lolz)…
As for the display, an AMOLED display will force the company to include an on-screen fingerprint sensor. These will easily spike the price upwards of $750 which will be a turn off.
This phone is perhaps the best phone I’ve seen in 2019