While thousand-dollar phones like the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy Note 8 are grabbing headlines, Asus is busy releasing an affordable phone with a beefy battery. The case in point is the upcoming ZenFone Max Plus, set to hit the US next month.
Like the ZenFone Max before it, the ZenFone Max Plus sports an aluminum body and a dual main camera setup. Asus ramped up the display to a 5.7" panel with an 18:9 aspect ratio and a resolution of 2160×1080. The main camera has a 16-MP sensor with an f/2.0 aperture and a 25-mm focal length. The second snapper has an 8-MP sensor with the same 120° wide-angle lens as its predecessor, and a 16.7-mm focal length. On the front-facing side there's another 8-MP camera with an 85° field of view and an f/2.0 aperture.
Under the hood, you'll find 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of storage, and an octa-core processor—though Asus isn't saying exactly what chip that is. We do know the GPU in the chip is an ARM Mali-T860, something that would usually point to a MediaTek or Rockchip SoC inside.
One of the the ZenFone Max Plus' biggest features (literally) is the 4130-mAh battery with fast charging. Asus says the phone should do 13 hours of video playback and 26 days of standby with 4G turned on. Curiously, the battery is slightly smaller than the 5000-mAh unit in the ZenFone Max, but it's still a substantial pack o' juice all the same.
The ZenFone Max Plus is also Asus' first phone with Face Unlock, a feature quickly growing in popularity after the launch of the iPhone X. The back of the phone has a standard fingerprint sensor. All of this hardware is going for a scant $229 when the phone hits stores in February—a far cry from the eye-watering prices of those flagship phones.