Asus officially showcased its new Zenfone 5 series at MWC 2018, but an important variant has been missing from the list: the Asus Zenfone 5 Max. The versions announced were Zenfone 5, 5Z and 5 Lite: the first is a midrange device focused on the quality-price ratio, the second is the flagship version and the third is the budget one. Asus decided not to disclose the Zenfone 5 Max at MWC this year which should be an affordable version focused on battery life, but it has just been spotted on Geekbench with the model number X00QD. The benchmarking platform has revealed the main hardware specs of the device and they are surprising.
Asus Zenfone 5 Max sports the best Qualcomm upper mid-range chipset: the octa-core Snapdragon 660 running at a max frequency of 2.2 GHz. The SoC is supported by 4 GB of RAM, and the operating system installed is Android 8.0 Oreo. The presence of the Snapdragon 660 SoC is totally unexpected and it is an incredible thing if we consider that the Zenfone Max devices from the previous generations had low-end MediaTek chipsets. The score obtained by the alleged Asus Zenfone 5 Max on Geekbench are 1518 points in single-core and 5386 points in multi-core.
The result is similar to the one obtained by Vivo X20 Plus and other smartphones with Snapdragon 660 SoC inside. It seems that Asus Zenfone 5 Max will not be a typical mid-range device but an upper mid-ranger with great performance. If the price remains affordable and the battery as big as the ones on its predecessors, this device may become a best-buy in its range. Unfortunately, no other specs have been revealed by the benchmarking platform. We do not know when this device will be officially announced by the Taiwanese giant, nor do we know its launch price. At the moment, we just know that the handset has been recently certified by Wi-Fi Alliance.
(Via)
