The Asus Zenfone 11 Ultra is more screen, less zen

The days of the small Zenfone are over — maybe? Asus has officially unveiled the Zenfone 11 Ultra, and it is anything but the small-ish device that its last few predecessors were. It comes with a 6.78-inch screen, a huge 5,500mAh battery, and a sizable $899 starting price.

You don’t have to look too hard to identify that the Zenfone 11 Ultra is basically a rebadged ROG Phone 8, minus the gamer lights. Like its gaming-focused sibling, the 11 Ultra uses a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and comes with 12GB of RAM / 256GB of ROM in its base configuration. A 16GB / 512GB model will be sold outside the US. Like previous Zenfones, the 11 Ultra won’t work on Verizon in the US — only AT&T and T-Mobile.

The 11 Ultra uses an LTPO display, so it can ramp the refresh rate all the way down to 1Hz to save on battery life. Refresh rates can also go up to 144Hz, but only while gaming — otherwise, it maxes out at 120Hz. There’s a 50-megapixel main camera with f/1.9 lens, supported by Asus’ impressive six-axis stabilization, a 13-megapixel wide-angle lens, and a stabilized 32-megapixel 3x telephoto.

It’s 2024, so there are a few familiar-sounding AI features, including live language translation and two-way noise cancellation for phone calls. AI can summarize voice memo transcriptions, and the search functions for photos and system settings have been enhanced with AI.

This might be the new shape of the Zenfone, or it might not be — Asus’ global director for smartphones, Chih-Hao Kung, was vague on that point in a recent media briefing. He emphasized that the Zenfone 10 launched in the second half of last year and is still for sale now, but “at this moment, we don’t have any comments on this… This launch only focuses on the large-sized Zenfone 11 Ultra.”

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge