Asus ZenFone 4 Smartphone Series to Launch in May: Report

Taiwanese handset maker Asus is said to launch its next-generation ZenFone smartphone series in May. A report citing Taiwan's handset supply chain says that the company plans to ship over 20 million smartphones in 2017.

The report quotes some sources that estimated Asus smartphone shipments decreased 14.6 percent from 20.5 million in 2015 to 17.5 million ZenFone smartphones in 2016. The report adds that the upcoming ZenFone 4 smartphone series will come with upgraded specifications compared to the ZenFone 3 range - which is obvious. Unfortunately, there are not many details about the ZenFone 4 series available at the moment.

Earlier this month, the Asus X00GD was spotted at Chinese certification website TENAA and was believed to be one of the smartphones in the upcoming ZenFone 4 series. The biggest highlight of the smartphone was rumoured to be the massive 4850mAh battery. It was spotted running on Android 7.0 Nougat out-of-the-box and featured a 5.2-inch HD (720x1280 pixels) display. The smartphone was powered by a 1.5GHz octa-core Mediatek MT6750 processor.

The certification site listed several variants based on RAM/ inbuilt storage including 2GB/ 16GB, 3GB/ 32GB, and 4GB/ 64GB. The Asus X00GD sports a 13-megapixel rear camera, coupled with dual-tone LED flash, and an 8-megapixel camera at the front. The handset measured 149.5x73.7x8.85mm and weighed 169.5 grams. It was also seen featuring a fingerprint sensor embedded in the Home Button at the front.

Asus at the CES 2017 unveiled the new Asus ZenFone AR smartphone with AR+VR functionalities and will come in multiple variants. Asus also confirmed at least one version with 8GB of RAM. Along with the Asus ZenFone AR, the company unveiled the ZenFone 3 Zoom camera smartphone with 5000mAh battery at the event.