ASUS ZenFone Zoom Photo-Centric Android Smartphone Arrives Stateside Next Month for $399
It’s déjà vu all over again. Almost exactly one year ago, we first brought you news of the ASUS ZenFone Zoom. At the time, we were unaware whether the smartphone would ever make it to the United States. Today, we finally received our answer: the ZenFone Zoom will be available stateside next month for $399 off contract.
If you need a refresher, the ZenFone Zoom features a 5.5-inch 1080p display, a quad-core Intel Atom Z3590 processor with 4GB of RAM, 64GB or 128GB of internal storage, and a microSD slot that supports up to 128GB cards. And if that wasn’t enough, 5GB of ASUS WebStorage is provided free for life and 100GB of Google Drive cloud storage is provided free for two years.
Other features include 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC and a 3000mAh battery. In addition to a sleek metallic unibody design, you’ll also find a burnished leather rear cover which classes things up a bit. The centerpiece of the ZenFone Zoom, however, is its 13MP rear camera with a 10-element Hoya lens. The camera can focus at distances of just 2 inches and offers 3x optical zoom.
The big question for potential customers is how this smartphone will stack up to upcoming 2016-class smartphones. After all, the ZenFone Zoom has already been around for a year in other countries, so it’s not exactly a bleeding edge smartphone. However, it does have a pretty potent Intel processor and a generous 4GB of RAM, so it’s not like we’re dealing with low-end hardware here – the ZenFone Zoom should be plenty fast in just about any situation.
With that being said, ASUS is promising to reveal more details on the ZenFone Zoom on January 20th, so stay tuned.