The ASUS ZenFone AR will be launching in the United States as a Verizon Wireless exclusive, the largest mobile service provider in the country announced on Thursday. The exclusivity of the ASUS-made device powered by the Daydream and Tango technologies was already hinted at earlier today at Google I/O 2017, though the Big Red now officially confirmed the news. The New Jersey-based wireless carrier will start selling the ASUS ZenFone AR this summer, the company revealed, without providing a specific release date that will presumably be revealed in the coming weeks.
The Taipei, Taiwan-based consumer electronics manufacturer originally unveiled the ASUS ZenFone AR at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) earlier this year. The tech giant previously talked about several variants of the device boasting different amounts of RAM and internal storage, with Verizon now saying that only one particular model of the ZenFone AR will be available for purchase in the United States. The wireless carrier will be retailing the variant with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage space which is neither the cheapest nor the most expensive model of the handset. It’s currently unclear why U.S. consumer won’t be able to purchase the ZenFone AR model with 8GB RAM and 256GB of internal memory, though even the somewhat more modest version of the handset should be more than capable of handling everyday phone tasks, as well as run demanding virtual and augmented reality apps.
The ASUS ZenFone AR will also boast a 5.7-inch display panel with a resolution of 2560 by 1440 pixels and be powered by the Snapdragon 821, Qualcomm’s last year system-on-chip (SoC) equipped with the Adreno 530 GPU. A 23-megapixel camera accompanied with two more sensors for depth sensing and motion tracking will be featured on the rear side of the handset, while its front panel will house an 8-megapixel sensor. The ASUS ZenFone AR will run Android 7.0 Nougat out of the box and support apps made for Google’s Daydream and Tango platforms. No pricing details on the device have yet been announced, though Verizon promised to share an update on the matter in the coming weeks, presumably by early summer.