Whoever framed the quote ‘What’s in a name?’ surely never considered the emergence of smartphone market where one could come across different monikers of the same product. A name does speak a lot about the product, and if one gets it wrong by any chance, the entire effort of deciphering the details becomes kaput. And when it comes to the naming segment, Asus gets us confused, making us scan all angles before spilling the details of the product. This time it is the new Zenfone 3 Go, Asus’s upcoming smartphone, presumably to make its way into the MWC event in Barcelona.
Before we delve any deeper, let us remind you that Zenfone 3 Go has two other companions which too will see the light of the day during the upcoming MWC, namely Zenfone 3 Zoom and Zenfone AR Tango. Wait. Did we miss Zenfone 4? Ah! No, as the the Taiwanese company has rescheduled its launch for sometime in June or July citing shortage of certain components (especially LCD) as the plausible reason. Instead, we might see the fourth-Gen Asus phone grace the Computex 2017 (with the new ZenFlip UX370 and AIO VR?).
To compensate for the delay, Asus has put all its bets on three horses- Zenfone 3 Zoom aimed to capture the imagination of amateur photographers, Zenfone AR Tango for those who want to experience ‘parallel reality’ and of course the Zenfone 3 Go (which is the star of this write-up) targeted at those without big budgets.
Focusing our lenses on the star, the Zenfone 3 Go which has been leaked recently, it is a successor to Asus Zenfone Go ZC500TG launched in 2015. Reviving the Go series, the ASUS Zenfone 3 Go comes as a budget smartphone, with a suggested retail price of around EUR 150.
The phone sports a 5-inch screen with HD resolution (1280 x 720 pixels), Qualcomm Snapdragon 410 paired with 2GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal memory storage. On the imaging front, we have a 13-megapixel rear camera with 1.4 μm pixel size and a 5-megapixel selfie shooter. The camera as seen in the leaked image, is no longer in the centre as used to be in previous generations, but has been moved to left edge corner just above the LED flash. To click selfies, there’s a 5-megapixel front camera. In essence, the ASUS Zenfone 3 Go will be an excellent alternative to the Huawei P8 Lite (2017).
Read: Asus Nougat update
We have no further details as of now, but we can assume that the smartphone will have a brush metal finish. Other specs include a soft LED flash placed in for selfies, dual MEMS Microphones for noise suppression and Five-magnet speakers for high quality sound.
With all these reported specs, Asus is aiming to target the social and multimedia segment. However, with ASUS profitability already put to test in Q4 2016, the Taiwanese company will have to come up with something for the ultra-mobile devices market, especially considering the slowdown in ZenPad sales.
