The Asus Zenfone may be living on borrowed time, according to reports of an organizational restructure for the Taiwanese company. And that’s a really shame for everybody, even if you’ve never bought nor used one of Asus’ flagship phones.
The Taiwanese site TechNews claims the mobile division at Asus is caught up in a restructuring effort that’s seeing the team responsible for the ZenFone facing either layoffs or reassignments to other roles in the company. According to the report, Asus is going to continue to develop the ROG Phone, its gaming-focused handset, while the Zenfone 10 is the end of the road for that particular smartphone line.
Zenfone 10 preorders only went live last week. So in essence, we could be saying goodbye to this phones just as we would have started saying hello.
If all this is true and the Zenfone is no more after the current model’s launch, then that’s going to leave a sizable hole in the Android phone market. That’s not because the Zenfone was ever a big seller — like many phone makers, Asus finds itself competing with a bunch of other companies for whatever sliver of the market Samsung hasn’t nailed down. Rather, it’s because the Zenfone offered several things missing from other top phones on the market.
Why I love the Zenfone
For starters, the Zenfone remains one of the few handsets to insist upon a compact design with a screen that’s less than 6 inches. The Zenfone 10 offers a 5.9-inch display wrapped up in a cozy 5.8 x 2.7 x 0.37-inch design. Those dimensions were unchanged from the Zenfone 9 that came out in 2022.
Not everyone loves small phones, of course — there’s a reason phone makers keep churning out devices with bigger and bigger displays, while the number compact phones steadily dwindled. But if you like the feel of operating a phone with just one hand before easily tucking it into a pocket or purse, Asus had you covered with the Zenfone.
The small size of the ZenFone didn’t translate to a lack of power. In our battery test where we have fully charged phones surf the web until they run out of power, the Zenfone 10 turned in a 12 hours and 34 minutes, more than 2.5 hours better than the average smartphone. That earned the latest Asus flagship a spot on our best phone battery life list.
If there’s any disappointment to the Zenfone 10’s performance on our battery test, it’s that the new phone didn’t last as long as its predecessor. The Zenfone 9 logged a 13-hour and 13-minute result on that same battery test. Whatever else you want to say about Asus, it knows how to build a long-lasting flagship.
The Zenfone has other charms as well, not the least of which is its affordable price tag. You can currently preorder a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered Zenfone 10 with 8GB of memory and 128GB of storage for $699 — $100 cheaper than the Galaxy S23, which boasts similar specs. Android fans have also come to appreciate the ZenUI interface Asus lays down on top of Android. It’s a pretty minimalistic take on Android, with just a few welcome gestures, shortcuts and theming options built in.
Where the Zenfone fell short
That’s not to say everything was perfect with the Zenfone. In our testing, the phones generally came up short when comparing their cameras to similarly priced Android devices.
The Zenfone 10, for example, took acceptable photos, even if they lacked the color and brightness of what we got from the Galaxy S23 in a head-to-head shootout. It’s also hard to overlook the lack of a dedicated telephoto lens on the Zenfone 10 when that’s a feature you’ll find on the S23.
It just goes to show that for all the things the Zenfone got right, it couldn’t overcome an ordinary camera setup — not at a time when so many of us rely on our smartphones to double as the only camera we have on hand.
I also don’t think the Zenfone benefitted from Asus staggered rollout. In the case of the Zenfone, we first reviewed the device when it was announced back in June. It’s only now about to reach the U.S. That’s a big gap between when a phone gets unveiled and when it’s ultimately available to buy, and it’s hard for a lower profile device like the Zenfone to remain at the top of everyone’s mind in the interim. That’s not a problem Samsung’s Galaxy phones or any of the iPhones have to contend with.
Farewell, Zenfone
Despite those missteps, I’m still sad to see the end of the line for the Zenfone — assuming, of course, that report out of Taiwan is accurate. Smartphone shoppers benefit from more choice, not less, and as a compact phone that lasted a long time on a charge, recent editions of the Zenfone filled a need that I’m afraid will go unanswered in the absence of another version of Asus’ flagship.