It seems like Samsung and Sony will not be the only companies to announce their flagships smartphones at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, as ASUS just confirmed that it will launch the ZenFone 5 at the tradeshow. This Taiwan-based company has started sending out press invites for its February 27 event in Barcelona, which will kick off at 7:30PM CET, which essentially means that ASUS plans to introduce its ZenFone 5 smartphone(s) a day after Samsung and Sony introduce their offerings, as both companies have scheduled press conferences for February 26.
Now, it’s worth noting that ASUS did not specifically mention the ZenFone 5 in its press invites, but the number five, in addition to the ‘backto5’ hashtag, definitely suggest that the ZenFone 5 smartphone(s) is on the way. Now, the ‘backto5’ hashtag is actually a reference to the ZenFone 5 which was announced back in 2014 as one of the company’s first smartphones, back when ASUS didn’t have the same structure as it has today, so the ZenFone 5 wasn’t exactly a flagship phone. In the provided image above, which is the company’s invite at the same time, you will also notice Qualcomm’s logo, which confirms that the upcoming device will sport one of Qualcomm’s processors. Having said that, ASUS will probably introduce more than one ZenFone 5 handset at MWC 2018, as that’s what the company did with previous models. Another factor that points to the ZenFone 5 launch is the fact that the company’s CEO, Jerry Shen, said back in September last year that the company plans to launch the ZenFone 5 lineup in March, and if those devices get announced on February 27, they’ll probably be ready to go in March, so the timeline fits.
The ASUS ZenFone 5 Max and ZenFone 5 Lite surfaced recently, and those are some of the ASUS-branded phones that could make an appearance at MWC 2018, though it’s also possible that neither of the two will, as ASUS usually releases ‘Max’ and ‘Lite’ variants later on, but we’ll see. One of the ZenFone 5 devices that is expected to land at MWC 2018 is expected to be the company’s flagship, maybe the ZenFone 5 Ultra or something of the sort, as we’re still not sure what naming structure will ASUS use this time around. That handset is expected to ship with the Snapdragon 845 64-bit octa-core SoC, unless ASUS decides to launch a ZenFone 5-branded flagship later on, which is also a possibility.