ASUS ZenFone 2 announced as first phone with 4GB of RAM
ASUS’s CES 2015 press event is going down right now, and the company has just announced the ZenFone 2. The biggest immediate takeaway? 4 full gigabytes of RAM stuffed inside, which is the first smartphone to do so.
That nugget was tucked in with a bevy of other interesting features ASUS wanted to highlight, including the device’s 64-bit quad-core Intel Atom Z3580 chipset, a 13 megapixel front and 5 megapixel rear camera setup that features improved HDR and a dual-toned flash and more.
The display comes in at 5.5 inches and has 1080p resolution, and it’ll be surrounded by a chassis that takes up just 28% of the overall viewing area of the device’s front-side. As we expected, the buttons on the rear are for volume adjustment purposes — no dual cameras here — but they, of course, couldn’t call that an innovation considering LG has been there and done all of that.
Software-wise we’re getting Android 5.0 Lollipop, but not without an updated ZenUI to sit atop. ASUS doesn’t have the worst user interface in the world so that shouldn’t be much of an issue if you can tolerate the stuff that goes on top of other manufacturers’ Android builds.
When’s it coming? As soon as March, though we’re sure there will be varying degrees of availability depending on which market you’re in. What we won’t have to wait for more information on is pricing, with ASUS proudly announcing it’ll come in starting at a cool $199.99. Not too bad for everything you’re getting. Let’s just hope it won’t be a pain to get your hands on once it finally makes its way to store shelves.
[Note]: The word “starting” could indicate that $199.99 is the contract pricing, though ASUS wasn’t initially clear on the matter and we’ll be trying to get some confirmation to clear things up.