The Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra abandons the small-phone market

Asus’ latest flagship is the Zenfone 11 Ultra. For lovers of small phones, this represents one of the stalwart small-phone manufacturers abandoning you. I’m sorry. The Zenfone 10 was a unique little 5.9-inch powerhouse, but the Zenfone 11 is just another big Android phone, with the same 6.78-inch display as everyone else. Big displays are expensive, so of course the price is bigger, too: $899 instead of the $699 price of the smaller phone.

The whole phone looks a lot more generic than last year. The back now has a square camera block that looks like every other phone, instead of the two big camera circles of the Zenfone 10. The front screen is flat, the sides are a flat metal band, and the only real identifying features are a few decorative lines on the rear panel.

That big 6.78-inch display is a 2400×1080 OLED. Normally it runs at 120 Hz, but Asus says it’s capable of 144 Hz “for gaming only.” It has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, 12GB or 16GB of RAM, and 256GB or 512GB of UFS4.0 storage. The 5500 mAh battery is a bit bigger than most phones, so that’s something to cling to. The phone has 65 W wired charging and 15 W wireless charging, IP68 dust and water-resistance, and an in-screen fingerprint reader. There’s a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the bottom of the phone.

The main camera is a 50MP Sony IMX890. That’s not particularly impressive since that’s a secondary camera on some other phones. Camera No. 2 is a 13 MP Ultrawide. Camera No. 3 is a 32MP sensor with a 3x optical zoom.

The Android market is packed with phones, and the hard thing to accomplish for any manufacturer is standing out from the crowd. The Zenfone line used to do that by being one of the only options for a small high-end phone, while the gamer-focused ROG line handled the 6.7-inch market. Now the Zenfone is just another generic big phone. The phone ships in April and will work on AT&T and T-Mobile.

Listing image by Asus