Asus claims that the new device can go for 914 hours of standby time and up to 38 hours of talk time. Sadly, the battery is non-removable, meaning you cannot carry replacements for long trips. As far as other features are concerned, the Zenfone Max sports a 5.5-inch HD (720×1280 pixels) IPS display with ASUS’s TruVivid technology and runs ZenUI 2.0 based on Android 5.0 Lollipop. Under the hood, there’s a quad-core Snapdragon 410 processor clocked at 1GHz along with 2GB of RAM. Talking about the storage, there’s 16GB of internal storage which can be expanded up to 64GB via a Micro SD card. Design wise, the Zenfone Max looks pretty standard, but Asus claims that the ZenFone Max is just 5.2mm thin, pretty unbelievable for a phone housing a mammoth 5000 mAh battery inside. [Update: Scratch that, it’s actually 10.55mm thick]
As for the cameras, on the back there’s a 13MP shooter with dual LED flash, f/2.0-aperture lens with ultra-fast laser auto-focus and a 5MP on the front. The smartphone is also capable of Dual SIMs with 4G capabilities. All in all, the ZenFone Max looks similar to the ZenFone Laser, but with a bigger battery. A lot of OEMs are trying to steal the market by launching phones with mammoth-size batteries including Gionee’s Marathon series which are a little pricier than the new Zenfone Max and Lenovo’s Vibe P1/P1m which are also addressing the same niche audience. Asus has been doing pretty good in the market with their low end smartphones lately and with Zenfone Max, I think they will do even better as customers these days are demanding better battery backup and the Max’s price trumps all the other competitors.
Priced at a fair amount of Rs 9,999, the Zenfone Max is right now available for pre-orders via Flipkart. The phone according the website will be available starting from January 14.
