Asus had carved out a niche for its Zenfone series – small premium phones with relatively large batteries, 3.5mm headphone jacks and more customization options than you can shake a stick at. And now it has thrown it all away.
Last week’s poll shows that 30% of those who cast their vote are waiting for a small Zenfone 11 (and we don’t even know if such a phone exists). Then a whopping 41% of voters think that the Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra just isn’t all that good. Interest might pick up if the prices drop, but Asus phones rarely get serious discounts.
Who is this phone for, anyway? People who don’t have €100 extra to spend on an ROG Phone 8? That must be a small group, most people either have ROG Phone 8 money or they are missing more than €100.
Nothing on the spec sheet stands out – sure, the Zenfone 11 Ultra is a capable device, but it is priced as such too. Some of the competition is better value for money and won’t call it quits on OS updates after two versions like Asus will.
We believe that there is a niche for enthusiast phones – not gaming phones, just power user phones. And companies like Asus and Sony seem positioned just right to capture that market, but neither has managed it.
Asus doesn’t even let you unlock the bootloader anymore, so that you can continue using its awesome hardware with a third-party ROM, one that is kept up to date. We hear murmurs that Sony will go up to 5 years of support (that is 5 OS updates + security patches), but we will see if that’s true. At least you can unlock the bootloader on Xperias.