After a series of many leaks and revelations, Taiwanese handset manufacturer Asus on Tuesday finally launched its first smartphone in the ZenFone 4 series, called the “Asus ZenFone 4 Max (ZC554KL)” in the Russian tech market. Priced at RUB 13,900 (approx. Rs. 15,200), the all-new ZenFone 4 Max will be made available for purchase in Russia pretty soon in Black, Gold and Pink colour options. Sadly, the company has made no official announcements about the pricing details and availability of the Asus Zenfone 4 Max mid-range smartphone for other markets. The other four Asus smartphones in the ZenFone 4 line-up (Asus ZenFone 4, Asus ZenFone 4 Pro, Asus ZenFone 4 Selfie, and Asus ZenFone 4V) are expected to be launched sometime later of this month. The main highlights of the ZenFone 4 Max are its dual rear camera setup, and a massive 5,000mAh battery.
Talking about its design, the Asus Zenfone 4 Max sports a sleek metal body design with metal edges all around, giving it an overall premium look. The new Zenfone 4 Max features a trio of capacitive navigation buttons and a front-mounted fingerprint sensor that is housed underneath the physical Home Button of the device. The company claims that the fingerprint sensor will unlock the phone in just 0.3 seconds. The volume rockers as well as the power/lock buttons are all housed on the right-hand edge of the smartphone and a 3.5mm audio socket is placed on the very top edge of the device. The speaker grilles are seen at the bottom edge of the handset along with a microUSB 2.0 charging port sitting in the middle. The rear panel of the smartphone houses a 13MP+13MP dual rear camera setup, LED flash module and company’s logo, while the top front panel features an 8MP selfie camera, sensors, an earpiece and a soft LED flash.
As far as specifications are concerned, the Asus Zenfone 4 Max comes equipped with a full-HD IPS display with a screen resolution of 1920 × 1080 pixels and a 2.5D curved glass coating on top of the display. Under the hood, the smartphone comes in two variants based on their processing unit—one variant is powered by a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 quad-core processor, while the other variant is powered by a 1.4GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 octa-core processor. In terms of memory, the device is backed up by a 2GB/3GB/4GB of RAM and 16GB/32GB/64GB of internal storage. All these native storages are further expandable up to 256GB via a microSD card. Talking about its software front, the new Asus Zenfone 4 Max runs company’s proprietary ZenUI 3.0 custom UI skin, based on Google’s latest Android 7.0 Nougat operating system.
In terms of optics, the Asus Zenfone 4 Max sports a dual rear camera setup that comes combined with two 13-megapixel sensors. Among these two cameras, the main camera sports a 13-megapixel sensor with an f/2.0 aperture, 80-degree wide-angle lens, while the secondary camera comes with a 13-megapixel sensor with 120-degree wide-angle lens and EIS. Both the rear cameras are accompanied with Phase Detection AutoFocus (PDAF), Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) and an LED flash module. On the front, the device features an 8-megapixel front-facing shooter with an f/2.2 aperture, 85-degree wide-angle lens, and a soft LED flash for capturing selfies and making video calls even in low light.
Connectivity options on the device include dual-SIM, 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, GPS/A-GPS, FM Radio, 5-magnet speakers with NXP Smart Amp Amplifier, a 3.5mm audio jack and a microUSB port for charging and data transfer. Sensors on the device include a Fingerprint sensor (front-mounted), Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Ambient Light sensor, and Proximity sensor. On the battery front, the Asus Zenfone 4 Max packs a mammoth 5,000mAh battery with 10W rapid charging support. The company claims the battery is rated to deliver up to 40 hours of talk time on 3G, up to 46 days of standby time on 4G LTE, and up to 22 hours of video playback time. Dimensionally, the handset measures 154 x 76.9 x 8.9 mm and weighs 181 grams.
