ASUS Zenfone 10 Goes Up For Preorder With Specs That Punch Above Its Price

Smartphones just keep getting bigger, and most efforts to offer smaller phones to consumers were doomed to failure. Asus is still fighting the good fight for those who demand a smaller phone. After announcing the Asus Zenfone 10 several months back, Asus has finally released the phone in the US. It's compact and not too expensive, but the Zenfone 10 still has top-of-the-line hardware.

Like its predecessor, the Zenfone 10 packs a 5.92-inch OLED (144Hz) screen with slim bezels, making it just 68mm wide. For comparison, the Pixel 7 is 73mm wide, and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is 78mm, so the Zenfone 10 should be more comfortable to hold even if you've got smaller hands. It's also very light at 172g, which is 30-40 grams lighter than most flagship phones. The frame is aluminum, but Asus saved some weight by using a plastic back.

Inside, the Zenfone 10 has the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. That version of the phone is just $699.99, which is $100 less than the similarly-equipped Galaxy S23. There's an upgrade to 256GB of storage for $50 more, or you can get a version with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for $799.99.

The design is clean and minimal—the most notable physical feature is the camera array on the back, which features two enormous lenses. There's a 50MP primary camera and a 13MP ultrawide. The sensor sizes are the same (or smaller in the case of the ultrawide) as the Galaxy S23, and that phone has more "normal" lens covers. Asus is definitely dressing up its cameras to make a statement, but don't expect Samsung or Pixel-level photography.


With a 4,300-mAh battery, the Zenfone should easily last a day, or possibly even two if you don't use it too much. The smaller display definitely helps here. The screen is also dimmer than the latest Samsung and Google phones, but the 1,100 nits of peak brightness should still make it sufficiently readable outdoors.