The first  Snapdragon 821 phone, the Zenfone 3 Deluxe was announced over 2 months ago. While being the first phone manufacturer to ”announce”, we thought other manufacturers such as Samsung, LeEco or Xiaomi will beat them to releasing a Snapdragon 821 phone for sale, as ASUS is known for announcing a device but taking months to release it. But surprisingly, no one beat them to it as the Zenfone 3 deluxe is now available for purchase starting in the company’s own home country, Taiwan.

The phone costs 24,990 Taiwanese dollars which is about 5320 Yuan (roughly $800) and will be available in Glacier Silver and Shimmer Gold with the former shipping first by September 12 and the gold by September 23.

The Snapdragon 821 chip is a slight improvement over the Snapdragon 820. It has a higher clock-speed for the CPU and GPU. Qualcomm puts the improvement in performance over the SD 820 at 10%.

Zenfone 3 Deluxe Specs

The Zenfone 3 Deluxe has other things going for it apart from the new chip. It has a 5.7” Super AMOLED 1080p display with Gorilla Glass 4, 6GB of LPDDR4 RAM, a generous 256GB UFS 2.0 memory, an 8MP shooter up front, and a 23MP Sony IMX318 rear camera that is protected by sapphire glass. The rear camera has OIS, laser focus, and RGB color sensor calibration.

The phone runs Android 6.0.1 with ASUS Zen UI 3.0 overlay, has dual SIM slots, a fingerprint scanner, a 3000mAh battery with QC 3.0 Support. The Zenfone 3 Deluxe weighs 170 g and is 7.5 mm thick.

RELATED: Qualcomm Reveals Details About Snapdragon 821

If you feel you don’t want to spend that much on a Snapdragon 821 phone, there’s a Snapdragon 820 version which has 4GB of RAM and 32GB ROM that sells for 15,990 Taiwanese Dollars which is about 3400 Yuan ($510) and another 4GB + 64GB that sells for 17,990 Taiwanese Dollars (3830 Yuan/$575). All other features remain the same.

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