ASUS recently unveiled its ZenFone 3 range of smartphones, with the ZenFone 3 Deluxe taking its pride of place as the most exciting device in this year’s lineup. While the regular ZenFone 3 and the large-screen ZenFone Ultra are also two of the options that are likely to be positioned in the mid-range segment of the market, the Taiwanese tech company is now believed to be working on yet another handset that could well be launched at some stage during this year. That’s because an all-new ASUS smartphone has now been listed on GFXBench, revealing quite a bit about the upcoming device. As per the listing on the benchmarking website, the device comes with model number Z01B, and is likely to be positioned a notch below the ZenFone 3 that was unveiled last month.
The ASUS Z01B comes with modest, mid-range hardware, which makes some observers believe that the device might be an upgrade for the ZenFone 2 Laser or the ZenFone Max, both of which are priced between $130 to $190 dollars in India depending on the variant chosen. Taking a look at the spec-sheet for the upcoming device, it features a 5.5-inch 1080p display panel and is powered by a Snapdragon chip that comes with an octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU clocked at a maximum of 1.4 GHz and an Adreno 505 GPU. While the specific SoC is not laid out in black and white, the combination of the Adreno 505 GPU and the 1.4 GHz Cortex-A53 chip strongly suggests that we’re probably looking at the Snapdragon 430 or 435, although that’s an educated guess at this point in time.
Either way, a Snapdragon 400-series chip suggests that even though the device might not be a speed demon by any stretch, it may well be priced pretty attractively. The rest of the hardware is also keeping in line with what one might expect from a lower mid-range device in 2016, including 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. According to GFXBench, the device will run Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box, and the two cameras on the back and front will likely come with 13 and 8-megapixel sensors respectively. The device will apparently come with a pedometer (among a whole host of other sensors), but the NFC chip will remain conspicuous by its absence.
