Last year, Lenovo sold Android smartphones based on Intel Atom SoC but sales numbers turned out to be disappointing. This year, Asus announced 3 smartphones powered by Intel Atom Z2520 and Z2580 SoC at CES 2014, with screen sizes ranging from 4″ to 6″, and much more aggressive pricing, as the 4″ version will sell for $99, the 5″ version for $149, and the 6″ version for $199.
Asus ZenFone 4/5/6 Specifications:
- SoC
- ZenFone 4 – 1.2GHz Intel Atom Z2520 CPU with Quad-Thread Hyper-Threading Technology
- ZenFone 5/6 – 2GHz Intel Atom Z2580 CPU with Quad-Thread Hyper-Threading Technology
- System Memory – 1GB RAM
- Storage – 8 or 16 GB NAND Flash + micro SD card slot (Up to 64GB )
- Display
- ZenFone 4 – 4″ WVGA 800 x 480-pixel TFT display
- ZenFone 5 – 5″ HD 1280 x 720-pixel IPS display
- ZenFone 6 – 6″ HD 1280 x 720-pixel IPS display
- Camera
- ZenFone 4 – 5 MP rear camera, 0.3 MP front camera
- ZenFone 5 – 8 MP rear camera, 2 MP front camera
- ZenFone 6 – 13 MP rear camera, 2 MP front camera
- Connectivity – Integrated 802.11b/g/n; Wi-Fi Direct
- Cellular Networking – GSM/GPRS/EDGE; WCDMA/HSPA+, DC-HSPA+ (DL/UL): 42/5.76 Mbps
- Battery
- ZenFone 4 – 1170 mAh
- ZenFone 5 – 2050 mAh
- ZenFone 6 – 3230 mAh
- Dimensions / Weight
- ZenFone 4 – 124.4 x 61.4 x 11.2-6.3mm / 115g
- ZenFone 5 – 148.2 x 72.8 x 10.3-5.5mm / 144g
- ZenFone 6 – 166.9 x 84.3 x 9.9-5.5mm / 200g
ZenFone 6 will also feature GloveTouch and PenTouch technologies so users can operate the device with gloved hands or any stylus, as well as the company SonicMaster audio technology and PixelMaster technology for the camera. Asus ZenFones will initially support Android 4.3 with ZenUI, and be upgraded to Android 4.4.
The phone will be available at the end of Q1 2014 in Asia, and most probably on Aliexpress, and other Chinese retailers. We’ll see how Intel based smartphones will fare this year in terms of performance, app compatibility, and sales. At least the Asus phones are priced to sell, and they’d better sell well, as according to rumours, 2014 could be a make or break year for Intel, as the company may simply stop investing in R&D for mobile SoCs in 2015 if they can’t improve sales.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress
Wow! at that price, they are competitive with the chinese “white box” phones using MTK processors! while having some better features [ camera, storage ].
I hope they make these available world wide and that these prices are not contract prices
Without 2 gb of ram they won’t sell anything.
in my limited world view there is ARM and then there is x86. but no one bothers to tell me what this processor is.
or what i really want to know can you get a real linux to run on it.?
@mary
Same goes for me really! Also I wonder how these chips compare to current (& planned) ARM incarnations for processing power etc 🙂
@mary
“in my limited world view there is ARM and then there is x86. but no one bothers to tell me what this processor is.”
x86
“or what i really want to know can you get a real linux to run on it.?”
linux runs evreywhere
Also any news about a Zen-Padfone?
Mary: Linux should run fine on it but you need to be able to boot a new kernel probably and here it matters whether the bootloader is locked or not.
The real issue here will be getting the 2D and 3G acceleration working as these chips have PowerVR graphics as far as I can tell and Intel & PowerVR do a bad job at supporting Linux on these.
I’ll wait a bit longer till we get Intel phone SOCs with Intel GPUs that work nicely with Intel open source drivers.
@eebrah
These are the “unlocked” prices.
@Ovi
With Android 4.4, I’m not sure 2GB RAM is that important since they’ve optimized the OS. We’ll see.
@onebir
@bohocmasni
Other have already answered, but Intel only does x86 processors. You may have read about Intel + ARM, but it’s only for manufacturing for another company.
I’ve seen benchmarks showing Intel Z2580 in Lenovo K900 is a quite bit slower than the Exynos 5410 Octa SoC used in Galaxy S4. http://www.phonearena.com/news/Intel-Atom-Z2580-AnTuTu-score-drops-20-after-revision-to-site_id45271#2-
@bohocmasni
>> linux runs evreywhere
Not everywhere — still don’t have it running on my Radioshack TRS 80 L1 4K but nearly everywhere
I wish they had added a HDMI port. Would make for a nice media player that way
$99? For that price and included features, it could count as one of the most competitive x86 dev boards out there right now.
Please let there be an unlocked bootloader…
alright they are out any links to getting non android linux running on it?
http://www.shopat7.com/mobile/asus/zenfone-4-white?gclid=CKaj_e36m74CFUcpjgodZrUAQw
@mary
Hmmm 2990 Baht (About $92), even cheaper than the price they officially announced.