TL;DR
- ASUS has launched the Zenfone 12 Ultra smartphone.
- The device has a lot in common with the ROG Phone 9 series, but brings more AI features.
- The phone has a recommended price of ~$1,135 and a promotional price of $1,032.
ASUS launched the Zenfone 11 Ultra a year ago, and this flagship Android phone eschewed the compact approach of past Zenfone models. Instead, it borrowed loads of elements from the ROG Phone 8 series. Now, the Taiwanese brand has launched the Zenfone 12 Ultra, and it unsurprisingly features the ROG Phone 9‘s DNA.
The Zenfone 12 Ultra has a tweaked design compared to the ROG Phone 9 series. The rear camera housing features a different design, while the ROG device’s rear lighting gives way to a plain glass back. Thankfully, you’re getting Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on the front once again, along with an IP68 rating, so that should give you some peace of mind regarding durability.
Dive under the hood, and you’ll see plenty of shared features. The Zenfone 12 Ultra still packs a 6.79-inch 144Hz LTPO OLED screen (2,500 nits of peak brightness, 1,600 nits in high-brightness mode) and the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. The company didn’t shed light on any cooling measures, but previous phones tell us that the new chip definitely needs some breathing room.
The shared features don’t end here. The Zenfone 12 Ultra also offers a 5,500mAh battery with 65W PPS wired charging and 15W Qi-based wireless charging. The company claims a 39-minute charging time when using a 65W charger, which is a brisk speed in light of the battery capacity.
ASUS Zenfone 12 Ultra: Hot or not?
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You can also expect the same flexible triple rear camera system, consisting of a 50MP LYT-700 main camera (with gimbal-OIS), a 13MP ultrawide lens (120-degree field-of-view), and a 32MP 3x telephoto camera. A 32MP RGBW camera is available in a punch-hole cutout for video calls and selfies.
ASUS is also offering a variety of camera-related software features. This includes AI tracking and auto-zoom for videography, an object eraser dubbed AI Magic Fill, AI Unblur functionality, an action pan-style mode, and background noise removal for videos. The latter is simply an on/off affair rather than a comprehensive tool like Google’s Audio Magic Eraser, but ASUS says it can eliminate noise like passing cars, crowd noise, and barking dogs. Photo styles make an appearance once again, with the new phone offering soft and warm, rich and warm, gentle cool, and vivid cool profiles.
Other notable features worth knowing include a 3.5mm port, eSIM support, and dual stereo speakers.
Zenfone 12 Ultra software: AI Everything
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
Last year’s phones shipped with plenty of general AI features, and ASUS is upping the ante today. The company says the Zenfone 12 Ultra is the world’s first phone with the Meta Llama 3 8B AI model running on-device, and it’s used for summarization duties via the NPU.
The new phone offers call translation (supporting third-party apps too), article and document summaries, semantic search for photos, and a recorder app with on-device features like transcription, multiple speaker identification, translation, and summarization. What’s also particularly neat is that users can choose between cloud and local processing for some features, like the recorder transcripts.
If there’s one area where the Zenfone 12 Ultra falls short of rivals, it’s the update policy. ASUS is promising just two OS upgrades and five years of security patches. The former is particularly disappointing in light of the phone’s price.
Zenfone 12 Ultra price and availability
Paul Jones / Android Authority
The Zenfone 12 Ultra has a recommended price of €1,099 (~$1,135) in Europe, but ASUS is offering a promotional price of €999 (~$1,032). Unfortunately, the company says it hasn’t decided on a UK or US release just yet. Expect to find the phone in Sage Green, Ebony Black, and Sakura White color options.
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