The Asus Zenfone 11 leak shows that it will continue to fly the flag for small, powerful phones
Asus was forced to deny rumors last year that it was discontinuing its Zenfone range – and its previous claim that the speculation was “not true” appears to be correct, as the first leaks for the Asus Zenfone 11 have now surfaced.
If you’re looking for a small but powerful smartphone, that’s potentially good news. The Zenfone, which traditionally has a 5.9-inch screen, is one of the last remaining contenders for our guide to the best small phones – especially now that the iPhone mini appears to be dead.
The Zenfone 11 specs, spotted in the Google Play Console developer code by 9to5Google, doesn’t reveal much about the phone apart from its likely existence. The specs appear to include a 1080p display, 16GB of RAM, and a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor.
That suggests it won’t be a huge performance upgrade over the Asus Zenfone 10, which also had a 1080p display and offered 8GB/16GB RAM options. However, that top processor would make it powerful for its size – perhaps even unnecessarily powerful, as we argued in our Asus Zenfone 10 review.
Another possible design tweak, as shown in the listing image, is that the Zenfone 11 may switch to a centered hole-punch design for its selfie camera, instead of the traditional corner-mounted cutout. That would ensure it matches the design of the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro and makes selfies a little more intuitive.
Unfortunately, there’s no rumored release date for the Zenfone 11 yet, aside from the unlikely inclusion of February 25 in the leaked list. With the Zenfone 10 not arriving until June 2023, an equivalent release seems more likely this year.
Is a small update enough?
In many ways it’s good to see signs of continued existence in the Asus Zenfone range – while most manufacturers have moved to 6.1-inch or 6.2-inch screens as their smallest offerings, the Zenfone is one of the few that offer a 5.9-inch screen. display and pocket size.
While we don’t know for sure that the Zenfone 11 will continue to have a 5.9-inch display, it would be a big surprise if it ditches that unique selling point. But what’s a little more worrying is that it appears to be another iterative upgrade based on the specs leaked so far.
We called the Asus Zenfone 10 “the definition of an iterative upgrade” that didn’t fix “many of the problems and questionable choices of the Zenfone 9,” so we’re hoping even more leaks point to bigger changes, like an upgrade to its mediocre cameras .
For now, it seems Apple is content with offering the iPhone SE as the spiritual equivalent of the iPhone mini. But while the SE is relatively affordable, it’s now extremely dated in terms of specs – so the Zenfone 11 could be our only hope for a small phone built to last more than a few years.