As much as phone manufacturers may try to hide their work, there are certain points which are very prone to being sources of leaks, and it’s not rare that we get a tip about an upcoming phone, tablet, or another mobile device, weeks or months before it’s even publicly announced. Sometimes those rumors are hard to confirm as they come from suspicious sources, but there are some things people will always trust, such as official benchmark sites as well as certification procedures.
The latter is particularly prone to leaking phones in some markets, as a device has to pass certain certification procedures in order to be eligible for sale in different regions. And whether the manufacturer likes it or not, the results of those procedures tend to get publicly leaked more often than not, making it a bad idea to pass a device through certification before the company is basically ready to arrive on the market.
And now, we’ve seen a possible leak of the Asus ZenFone 3, “courtesy” of a benchmarking site that seems to have caught at least two variants of the phone in its tests. The specifications of the phone sound interesting to say the least, as it will come equipped with two cameras – a 12-megapixel model and a 5-megapixel one – and a relatively fast processor complete with 3 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of internal storage. This information is of course difficult to confirm and it should be taken with a grain of salt, but it’s not unreasonable to believe that we’re looking at the official specifications of the phone.
Something that should come as no surprise to anyone is that the phone will apparently ship with Android 6.0 Marshmallow, something which is basically the norm nowadays for devices coming out in this range of the market.
Other reports talk about various interesting features that the phone will allegedly have as well, such as a fingerprint scanner and USB Type-C instead of a regular USB connector. The latter sounds especially nice, considering that the technology is starting to take solid ground in various areas of the market and it’s a good move towards progress in universal connectivity. The improvements that come with it may be considered small by some, subjectively, but in the end there’s also arguably not that much left to improve in the regular USB configuration right now.
When can we expect to see the phone? It’s hard to tell, as the benchmark leaks of course don’t discuss any possible release dates, but predictions among various specialists observing the market is that Asus might be ready to launch the device by the middle of this year. This would align with their past trends, and the company could definitely benefit from bringing out the phone around that time, in terms of their position on the market. On the other hand, if it comes in different variants, they should hopefully arrive at the same time instead of being spread out.
That’s because there have been some rumors surrounding Asus that the company might be looking to make their releases more regularly throughout the year, instead of focusing on specific time points, and that could include the release dates of separate variants. Something which might not make much sense in the eyes of most consumers, but could be of benefit for the company in terms of their exposure to potential buyers. We’ll have to wait and see how things turn out in this regard, but most fans seem hopeful that they will get both devices at the same time.