Asus was compelled to disclaim rumors final 12 months that it was killing off its Zenfone collection – and its earlier declare that the hypothesis was “not true” seems to be right, as the primary leaks for the Asus Zenfone 11 have now surfaced.

In case you’re out there for a small however highly effective smartphone, that is probably excellent news. The Zenfone, which historically has a 5.9-inch display, is among the final remaining contenders for our information to the very best small telephones – notably now that the iPhone mini seems to be lifeless.

The Zenfone 11 specs, noticed within the Google Play Console’s developer code by 9to5Google, do not reveal an enormous quantity in regards to the telephone aside from its doubtless existence. The specs seem to incorporate a 1080p show, 16GB RAM, and a Snapdragon eight Gen three processor.

That implies it will not be an enormous efficiency improve on the Asus Zenfone 10, which additionally had a 1080p show and provided 8GB/16GB RAM choices. That top-end processor, although, would make it highly effective for its measurement – even perhaps unnecessarily highly effective, as we argued in our Asus Zenfone 10 overview.

One different potential design tweak, as proven by the picture hooked up to the itemizing, is that the Zenfone 11 might change to a centered gap punch design for its selfie digital camera, relatively than its conventional corner-mounted cutout. That might see it match the design of Asus ROG Telephone eight Professional and make selfies a bit of extra intuitive.

Sadly, there is not any rumored launch date for the Zenfone 11 but, aside from the unlikely inclusion of February 25 within the leaked itemizing. With the Zenfone 10 solely arriving in June 2023, an equal launch this 12 months seems to be extra doubtless.

Is a minor replace sufficient?

In some ways, it is good to see indicators of continued life within the Asus Zenfone collection – whereas most producers have moved to six.1-inch or 6.2-inch screens as their smallest choices, the Zenfone is among the few that gives a 5.9-inch show and pocketable dimensions.  

Whereas we do not know for positive that the Zenfone 11 will proceed to have a 5.9-inch display, it might be an enormous shock if it disbursed with that distinctive promoting level. However what’s barely extra regarding is that it seems to be one other iterative improve, primarily based on the leaked specs to this point.

We known as the Asus Zenfone 10 “the definition of an iterative improve” that did not repair “most of the points and doubtful decisions of the Zenfone 9”, so we’re hoping that some additional leaks trace at larger adjustments like an improve to its middling cameras.

For now, it seems to be like Apple is content material to supply the iPhone SE as its non secular equal of the iPhone mini. However whereas the SE is comparatively reasonably priced, it is now extraordinarily dated by way of specs – so the Zenfone 11 may very well be our solely hope for a small-ish telephone that is constructed to final for various years.

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