Remember the ASUS ZenFone Zoom? This camera-centric Android phone first made its debut at CES 2015, and one year later, ASUS has announced that it’s finally going to launch.
The ZenFone Zoom will be available from B&H Photo the US on February 1. Pricing for the device will be set at $399, which will get you a model with 64GB of built-in storage. If that’s not enough, though, you can supplement it with a microSD card.
The highlight feature of the ASUS ZenFone Zoom is its 13-megapixel camera. What’s unique about the camera is that it’s got an optical zoom (3x), which is something that you don’t see a lot of in the mobile world. That camera is also packing optical image stabilization, dual LED flash, laser autofocus, a physical shutter key, and a manual mode that’ll let you control settings like white balance, exposure, ISO, and shutter speed. All of that adds up to make the ZenFone Zoom one of the most camera-centric Android handsets we’ve seen in recent memory.
While its camera is the main focus of the ZenFone Zoom, the rest of its feature set is pretty respectable, too. There’s a 5.5-inch 1920x1080 display with Gorilla Glass 4, 4GB of RAM, a 3000mAh battery, NFC, 5-megapixel front camera, and a quad-core Intel Atom Z3580 processor. The software on the ZenFone Zoom is Android 5.0 beneath ASUS’s custom user interface.
ASUS has been focusing on offering high-end Android hardware for an affordable prices lately with devices like the ZenFone 2. The ZenFone Zoom is the latest part of ASUS’s affordable flagship effort, offering high-end features like 4GB of RAM and a feature-packed camera. It’s kind of a bummer that the ZenFone Zoom missed its original Q2 2015 launch by so much, but it’s still an interesting option for Android shutterbugs that are looking for a new smartphone. Now we just have to wait a few weeks to get the phone in our hands so that we can really put that camera to the test.
