In the last couple of years, Asus has had less of a presence at MWC than in previous years. However, this year it came back with a ‘bang’, hosting an event in Barcelona on the Tuesday evening, which meant a good turnout of the press, as there were no other events – and the press can usually be relied upon to come a long for free food and drinks! Several hundred made the effort to attend.
The theme of the evening was #Backto5.
Shen introduced the three new ZenFone5 models. Image:Meko
Jerry Shen came on to open the event and to introduce the next ZenFone. The story has been about improving the products and the user experience and ‘the story is not done’, he said
New AI and analytics in the ZenFone5 which will be in three versions, the 5, the 5Lite and the 5z.
Daniela Idi is the South East Europe manager and she said that since the last ZenFone, the camera has been improved to support the desire of young people ‘to express themselves with their phones’.
The ZenFone 5 Lite, the lowest of the three phones, has ultra wide shot with four cameras. Research shows that the front camera is used as much as the ‘main’ rear camera, so Asus has worked on both areas with 20mp at the front, 16mp at the rear and 120º wide angle cameras. The 18:9 display is large with 80.3% screen to body ratio, FHD+ resolution and 2.5D glass There is fast face and fingerprint unlock and NFC for Google Pay support.
(The front camera uses a Sony IMX376 sensor. It uses a Snapdragon 630 processor with 3GB/32GB or 4GB/64GB configurations. The battery has 3,300mAh capacity)
Shen buddied up with Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon. Image:Meko
Cristiano Amon, President of Qualcomm then came on to welcome the new phones and he said that the DNA of Asus and Qualcomm is common in ‘caring about innovation’. There are projects between Qualcomm and Asus in PCs, smart speakers and networking as well as smartphones. Amon talked about the Nova Go ‘Always Connected’ PC.
The 845 is in the ZenFone 5z, the top of the range version, which also has the X20 LTE modem which can support 1.2Gbps using LTE radio, and without 5G.
(Later we checked the specifications and found it has 500 cd/m² of brightness and 95.4% of DCI P3 colour gamut from a Super IPS display+ and with a 90% display:body ratio. The rear camera uses a Sony ‘Flagship’ IMX363 sensor. The 5z is available in 6GB/64GB or 8GB 128GB/256GB configurations. The battery has 3,300mAh capacity)
The Snapdragon 636 is in the ZenFone5.
Marcel Campos is the Asus Global Marketing Head and he said that the Asus vision of AI starts with the people and the aim is to get the phone to learn from the user using deep learning. There are many new features in the new front end and six were highlighted.
Asus highlighted six Zenfone5 features. Image:Meko
The AI camera recognises the subject and automatically changes the mode accordingly. It can recognise food, text and animals. Most users don’t want to learn how to take better pictures. Campos showed some photos he took, highlighting the bokeh, the wide angle and the resolution. There is a Pro camera mode with RAW file support and a tripod mode The sensor is a new one, the Sony IMX363 with OIS and an aperture of F1.8.
The system can offer suggestions for picture improvements.
The Zenfone 5 has a 19:9 DCI-P3 (95.4%) 6.2″ with a 90% screen to body ratio. It has a notch but Campos said that it is 26% smaller than the Apple iPhone X and the phone makes an automatic adjustment to avoid the notch in landscape mode, reducing the width of the display.
The display has a smart screen function, which when ‘on’ automatically adjusts the colour temperature depending on the ambient light.
AI Boost can be used to make the system 12% faster – or it can be disabled for lower power use. OptiFlex is 3.09 faster with 6GB of RAM. You can use AI to control battery charge and by keeping battery at 80% charge overnight, you can extend the life of the battery. The system can track your life patterns and hold the charging point at 80% going to 100% in time for your normal wake up time, which doubles the life of the battery.
The 5 (and the 5z) has dual speakers and and an NXP audio amplifier. There are new Hi-res earphones and DTS Headphone:X as well as Hi Res audio.
The phone can ‘intelligently’ adjust the volume of the ring tone according to the environment. If there is a lot of noise it can increase the volume and vice versa.
Of course, there is lots of interest in emojis and Asus has the ZeniMoji. There is live face recognition for automatic tracking of expressions and the system also works with live Facebook effects in overlay. You can swipe on the fingerprint detector to bring up notifications.
Shen then came back on to announce that prices will start at €479 for 4GB and 64GB. The Lite will ship in March, the 5 in April and the 5z in June.
This Asus ZenFone 5 may be ‘LIte’, but it still looks pretty good. Image:Meko
After the presentations, we got a chance to look to the products ‘close up’ and we also had a look at the NovaGo, Qualcomm-based ‘always connected’
The Asus NovaGo uses a Qualcomm processor for ‘always connected’ functions. Image:Meko
Asus showed this trend of product evolution. Image:Meko
Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya – after and close to the Asus event and included just because we liked the picture! Image:Meko
