Last year’s Zenfone 8 (Review) had gotten plenty of positive reviews with many expressing their support for it’s compact design which greatly improves the ergonomic aspect of the smartphone. Now, the company aims to build upon the success of last year’s model with the launch of brand new Zenfone 9 which sticks to an almost similar dimension, but with better hardware specs and features under the hood.
The new model builds around a 5.9” OLED display which offers a FHD+ screen resolution alongside an ultra-smooth 120Hz refresh rate. On top of that, the front display is also garnished with other high-end features such as 112% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage, HDR10+ certification, as well as an impressive peak brightness of up to 1,100 nits.
On the imaging front, the phone is covered by a dual-camera setup on the rear side comprising of a 50 megapixels (Sony IMX766) main camera with 6-axis hybrid gimbal stabilizer as well as 12 megapixels (Sony IMX363) ultra-wide unit which offers 113-degrees FoV. This will be rounded out by a 12 megapixels front-facing camera for selfies and video calls.
Just like the recently announced Xiaomi 12S Ultra smartphone, the new Zenfone 9 is powered by the latest Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset which will be paired with at least 8GB RAM and 128GB built-in storage in the memory department. As usual, the phone will be shipped with a near stock Android 12 OS out of the box.
To keep it’s lights on, the ASUS Zenfone 9 draws power from a respectable 4,300mAh battery which carries support for 30W fast-charging. For those who wish to reduce battery degradation, the device allows user to set the maximum charge to either 80% or 90%, instead of a full charge.
The ASUS Zenfone 9 will be available in four different colorways such as Midnight Black, Starry Blue, Sunset Red and Moonlight White. It will be priced starting from US$699 in the U.S. market for the base model featuring 8GB RAM and 128GB onboard storage.
