ASUS Zenfone 12 Ultra Packs A Snapdragon 8 Elite And Lots Of AI Tricks

ASUS is coming in early with the Zenfone 12 Ultra premium flagship phone. Previous Ultras were traditionally launched in summer, but alas here we are with some nice upgrades, including camera sensors, a gimbal stabilizer, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, plus AI this and AI that. Two downers though: firstly, ASUS won't sell you the Zenfone 12 Ultra if you live in the U.S., and secondly, fans may not see a compact Zenfone 12 this year.

Trying to make phones stand out nowadays is a tall order, especially in the realm of slab phones. Device makers have almost resigned to cookie cutter external materials and design cues, focusing instead on improving the internals. Mom was right after all when she told us how it's the inside that counts, rather than the outside. Thus, when you see something like the new ASUS Zenfone 12 Ultra (or Samsung S25 Ultra or OnePlus 13), you're basically looking at the previous generation.


At the front, the 12 Ultra is endowed with a 6.78-inch Samsung-made LTPO OLED panel. It sports 2,500 nits peak with variable refresh rates between 1-120Hz (there's a 144Hz boost function for supported games). To ASUS' credit, it makes the frame and glass of each 12 Ultra with 100% recycled aluminum and 22% recycled glass, respectively.

Each side of the device is clean and straight-edged; it's nice to see an actual 3.5 mm headphone port yet still maintain an IP68 dust-water resistance rating. Wired and wireless audio both benefit by Dirac Virtuo spatial audio processing.


The rear camera hump has morphed ever so slightly—it's more rectangular now wherewith the flash has moved from under the main camera (in the Zenfone 11 Ultra) next to the 32MP telephoto. This optically-stabilized camera can punch into shots at 3x optical and up to 30x digital "Hyperclarity" zoom. The main camera is new, now with a Sony Lytia 700, but just as importantly sits within the latest gen-4 gimbal stabilizer. The 11 Ultra impressed many with its ability to stabilize heavy movement when capturing content, especially video. The implementation hasn't reached action camera levels yet, but the latest gimbal on the 12 Ultra is supposedly 66% better with the ability to correct up to ±5° of movement.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite is onboard as well, matched to 16GB DDR5X RAM and 512GB UFS 4.0 storage for the top configuration. This chipset also brings with it ASUS' vision of AI features and aids for phone users. The 12 Ultra comes with Meta's Llama 3 8B AI model baked-in, as well as Cloud AI. There's also AI Call Translator that can translate real-time calls, and AI Transcript that pairs with the recorder app to provide speaker identification, translation, and summarization.

Battery capacity is 5,500mAH supporting 65W (wired) and 15W (Qi 1.3 wireless) charging.

The ASUS Zenfone 12 Ultra is available now for roughly $1,150 in Europe, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, with Japan next on the release calendar.