Asus may have been a late entrant to the smartphone sector, but the company has been able to make giant strides in the industry with its handsets over the past couple of years and ever since it introduced its first-generation ZenFones at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada. Ever since then, the ZenFone range has earned itself a pretty decent following, thanks to quality hardware, an inoffensive default Zen UI ROM, sensible pricing, and of course, Asus’ much-vaunted quality control. Now that its current flagship, the ZenFone 2, has started to get a bit long in its tooth, the Taiwan-based tech company is apparently readying its next-gen flagship, the ZenFone 3, for launch at some stage later this year. While not much is known about the upcoming 2016 smartphone lineup from Asus, at least one creative Asus fan isn’t holding back from expressing what they believe will be their dream Asus handset this year.
The designer, who goes by the pseudonym ‘Hege’, has now revealed the rendering of a rather attractive looking concept gaming smartphone, called the ‘Asus Z2 Poseidon’, which is what the artist apparently thinks a top-tier gaming flagship smartphone should be like. The handset will come with the ROG, or ‘Republic of Gamers’ branding, which is a much-loved range of gaming PC components from the Taiwanese tech company. What’s really interesting, is that the smartphone is said to come with a factory-installed Fujitsu-manufactured liquid cooling setup, something that is usually seen in high-end DIY gaming PCs. According to the images on the artist’s website, the design shows three capacitive buttons, which is something that Asus has persisted with unlike other OEMs like Sony or Motorola.
The concept smartphone also sports top-shelf hardware hitherto unseen on any commercially-released smartphone, making it indeed a lust-worthy proposition for any tech lover. The Z2 Poseidon, according to Hege, will feature a 6-inch QHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) display with Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection. The device will be powered by a top-tier Intel SoC, and sport 6 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage, a 6,000 mAh of battery, and have four front-firing speakers. As if that wasn’t enough, the device will run Android 7.0, presumably, with Asus’ Zen UI on top. As for the cameras, Hege’s dream Asus flagship will have a 16-megapixel primary shooter with laser auto-focus and dual LED flash. there will also be a 5-megapixel front-facing camera, which will incorporate the emerging trend of front LED flashes for better-lit selfies.
As for the look of the device, the Z2 Poseidon will be carved out of Aluminum, and seems to have almost zero bezels on the side, making the phone’s footprint much smaller than that of most phablets with 6-inch screens. While some of the specs listed above may never materialize in real life for reasons of technological and/or financial feasibility, many others are very likely to appear on the horizon soon enough. Asus is one of the very few OEMs to have actually introduced a smartphone with 256 GB internal storage, and Samsung has already announced 6 GB RAM chips for smartphones. What’s more, rumors suggest that multiple flagships this year may actually ship with that much RAM, and quite a few smartphones have already started shipping with 6,000 mAh or larger capacity batteries. So who knows, a phone somewhat along the lines of the Z2 Poseidon may not be as far-fetched as it might seem at first glance.
