Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra breaks the mold! (premiere review!)

Asus ZenFone 11 Ultra in size, specification and appearance is somewhat reminiscent of the ROG Phone gaming models - but - as it was explained to us - it is not their exact clone and is addressed to a different audience. It's simply a flagship for everyone, not just gamers. Asus ZenFone 11 Ultra does not have gaming attributes, but it has an interesting pattern on the back panel and is offered in four colors, including bold orange. The housing meets the requirements of the IP68 tightness certificate.

Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra - premiere review video: GSMchoice.com via YouTube

The front is occupied by a 6.78-inch screen, but with a much narrower frame than in the compacts presented earlier. The frame is only 1.6 mm wide, not counting the bottom one, which is 2.2 mm. This allowed us to increase the screen to body ratio to 94% (from 90 in compacts). The Flexible AMOLED screen is provided by Samsung - it is a matrix with Full HD+ resolution, with a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz (but only available in the Gaming Genie game mode), LTPO technology and a typical brightness of 1,600 and a maximum of 2,500 nits. The screen is protected by GG Victus 2 glass. The screen hole houses a 32-megapixel selfie camera with an RGBW matrix that captures more light and a lens with a 90-degree field of view.

On the back of the housing there is a 50-megapixel Sony IMX890 main camera (1/1.56", f/1.9) with 6-axis gimbal optical stabilization, ensuring a blur-free image even in very dynamic scenes. Next to it we have a 32-megapixel camera with a telephoto lens with a 3x zoom and f/2.4 aperture, also with optical stabilization, but already classic. The digital zoom reaches 30x. The set is complemented by a 32-megapixel wide-angle camera with an f/2.2 aperture. The heart of the smartphone is, of course, the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, supported by LPDDR5x and UFS 4.0 memories with capacities of 12+256 and 16+512 GB. Power is provided by a 5500 mAh battery, with 65 W wired charging and 15 W inductive charging. There are also stereo speakers and a minijack output.

The system is, of course, Android 14, with the Asus overlay, which can, however, be abandoned in favor of a clean interface when configuring the smartphone. The manufacturer promises 2 system updates and 4 years of security support. Artificial Intelligence could not be missing - so we have the option of transcription, on-the-fly translation of conversations, as well as intelligent noise reduction during voice calls. There's also smart contextual search, wallpaper creation, and a new unobstructed video option - Video Genie.

It works similarly to the already known Game Genie - minimizing notifications and other "disturbances" - but not while playing, but watching movies. Asus knows that it is rather a niche manufacturer on the smartphone market, so in cooperation with Rihoshield and Devilcase, it has prepared dedicated covers and protective glass for the new model. Prices for the Asus ZenFone 11 Ultra model start at EUR 999. To start, the price has been reduced by 100 euros.