WATCH: ASUS Zenfone 8 Launch Event! - Livestream By CNET Highlights

So hello and welcome. Thank you for joining us today. I'm very excited to share the next generation of before, with you, ASUS blends, our know-how with customer feedback to achieve new milestones with each before generation. We are laser, focused on innovation and dedicated to giving users the best experience possible. This generation maintains the defined ordinary spirits to empower users with what they cannot find elsewhere. Before has offered users novel innovations year after year.

Two years ago we created before 6, the world's first smartphone, with the flip camera. Today we have taken engines one step further by making them big on performance. Quite compact, in size, before 8 offers superb performance, perfect pocketability, a stunning display and a progress camera system, and it fits all that easily. In the palm of your hand, it defies ordinary, so you may have to see it to believe it without further ado, let's meet the before 8 big arm performance compact. Sure you cannot wait to hear more about our new before 8.

So let's welcome Sasha hi Sacha. Thank you so much. Thank you SY and hello. Everyone. I have a feeling.

This is probably not what you expected us to reveal today, a compact phone and at first it may look just like a typical phone, but, as I mentioned, our motto is defied the ordinary and the before 8 definitely lives up to this at ASUS. We are well known for our large phones with our massive batteries, our before series, with our impressive flip camera and our spec busting kg gaming series. So chances are, if you know, and like ASUS phones, you like large phones, the bigger, the better. So why are we launching the surprisingly compact before here today? Well, phones are less and less about making calls and more about browsing. The web enjoying video games enjoying videos capturing the world around us and sharing it and for all this larger displays generally improve the user experience.

This does come at the cost of ergonomics, though, and an increasing number of our customers request better ergonomics from us, and they don't consider a smaller display and a smaller phone, a drawback, actually. On the contrary, there are several compact phones on the market already, but they all come with compromises. So we set out to make the most ergonomic phone. We could that's still truly a flagship without compromises, but what makes a phone ergonomic from our study? The key factor is the length of the thumb. If you want your phone to fit into your palm and be able to reach the left and right side of the display effortlessly, pretty much all flagship phones, these days are approaching a width of 80 millimeters, but research shows that over 95 of us have a thumb, length of 70, millimeters or less so to be ergonomic.

A phone should ideally have a width of less than 70 millimeters. To illustrate this here are some thumb zone simulations comparing different phones, green is where your thumb can reach easily and red is where you probably can't reach. Even when stretching your thumb. After going through several designs and prototypes and some clever math, we concluded that around 68 millimeters is the sweet spot that even users, with a smaller than average hand, can use comfortably, while still giving the biggest possible display space on the phone. Alright, so we know the ideal width.

What about the height then, when theory, the taller, the phone, the better, since you increase the size of the display right, but besides, looking pretty odd, a really tall phone increases, the overall weight and even worse, shifts the weight balance. Making it uncomfortable to hold a tall phone also fits in less pockets. So there's a clear upper limit for how tall phones should be after another round of simulations prototypes and math. We found the sweet spot to be just under 150 millimeters, at that height phones, fit into pretty much any pocket from jeans to shirts and jackets or even leggings. So here it is the before 8 in all its ergonomic glory.

What probably surprises you is that we managed to fit a 5.9 inch display into this super compact chassis. Besides the height and width of the phone, the shape of its edges and corners is crucial for ergonomics as well. We kept our comfortable signature 3d curve back design that we perfected on our before series over the years, and we adjusted the display edge to be as round and smooth and comfortable to hold as possible. We use a frosted matte glass back, which looks and feels really premium, has a nice grip to it and rejects fingerprints pretty well, and we have two color options: now: a classy obsidian black and a horizon silver on the horizon silver. You can see an understated, but cool, blue and yellow glow, depending on which angle you look at it from now, making a compact phone in itself isn't all that difficult.

If you cut enough corners here and there you can make it happen, but, like I mentioned earlier, we felt that other solutions on the market made too many compromises. More compact phone shouldn't mean it's a budget phone with budget components and made from cheaper materials from surveys. We know that performance and battery life are the two most important valued features customers desire in a compact phone, so we set out to make a true flagship phone in a compact chassis and in true ASUS fashion. We pushed everything to the limit, and we didn't just try to make it barely good enough to qualify as a flagship. First, we naturally chose the five nanometer Qualcomm snapdragon 888, to sit at the heart of the before 8.

Next up the battery. We wanted a large battery that matches the snapdragon 888, so we split the motherboard into two pieces and then used an interposer to essentially stack the two pieces on top of each other to reduce the oval footprint which allowed us to pack in a generous 4 000 William hour battery. So we have a 5.9 inch display a snapdragon 888 and a 4 000 William hour battery in a super compact chassis. This is what we think the before 8 should be all about. It's powerful, compact and optimized for one hand operation.

Now, let's take a very close up. Look at the insides of the before 8. The snapdragon 888 delivers not just the best CPU and GPU performance, but comes with support for incredibly fast and low latency 5g and Wi-Fi 6e as well, and thanks to the advanced, 5 nanometer manufacturing process, it's more power efficient and is up to 25, faster with graphics performance up by as much as 35. The before 8 really is a compact powerhouse and punches well above its weight and size. You can clearly see that the before 8 delivers higher scores than other phones based on the same platform.

In this simulated heavy multitasking benchmark. We run 24 popular apps, and we launch one after the other three times in a row. The before 8 delivers impressive performance as well. The before 8 is equipped with up to 16 GB of 6400 megabits per second lpddr5, while most other phones use only 5500 megabits per second memory. Now let me show you our 4 000 milliampere hour battery pack.

Now that's a big battery right. It also comes with 30 watt hypercharge adapter, which lets you top up this battery right here from zero to 50 in a very short period of time. Preferences for battery life versus performance vary from person to person and many times from this situation to the situation. Maybe you want to play a game or edit a video, and you want every drop of performance, or you just decided to go out with your friends, and you want battery life boost, since this might be a long night. We are giving you several modes that you can quickly switch between, that either prioritize the performance or that buy you up to three hours of extra battery life.

There's also an advanced mode that lets you fine-tune every little dial and tweak everything individually here at ASUS battery health has been one of our strengths as well. For years now, you can slow down the charging speed and limit the maximum charging capacity to extend the lifetime of your battery for years to come, and we even built a smart charging algorithm right into our alarm clock app so that adjusts the charging speed and the battery charges as slowly as possible. While you sleep, which extends the battery lifetime and the battery reaches 100. Just as you get up and pick up your phone, you won't actually see any of these components. So let me show you what you'll spend most of your time.

Looking at the display, I wish I really was at the beach, but this display is pretty convincing. The Samsung diamond pixel OLED display is another highlight of the before 8 and couldn't be more of a flagship panel with a high speed, 120hz refresh rate everything looks and feels really smooth. All of this comes wrapped in and protected by the latest corning gorilla glass Vitus. It covers an impressive 112 percent of the dcip3 color gamut and produces super vibrant colors and with a delta e below one, it's also very color, accurate and reproduces, realistic and lifelike colors, and thanks to our collaboration with pixel works, videos and pictures, look crisp and vibrant, as we showed earlier. The bottom half of the display is where you interact with the touchscreen most of the time to improve ergonomics even further.

We added a new one-hand mode that lets you pull down the entire UI to the bottom, half of the display. This lets you reach any part of the phone's interface easily and effortlessly. I'm sure you're curious about the camera system on the before 8. So let me show you camera wise. We obviously kept the same camera system that won the famous MHD camera competition where end users voted for which pictures they liked the best without actually knowing which phone those pictures were taken with the 64 megapixel main camera is not just great for daytime photos.

Thanks to the large sensor dimensions and pixel binning, quad, Bayer technology in the Sony, mix 686 we're able to capture a ton of light. This combined with the high gain algorithm, can make pictures up to four times brighter, so you can take great shots. Even in dark environments, we also have a 12 megapixel ultra-wide camera that essentially lets you zoom out and take a picture as if you took a few steps back to capture a more immersive shot. It also supports dual pixel autofocus, which is rare for ultrawide cameras. This means you can focus quickly and have a large focus range, so you can make sure nobody looks blurry in a group picture, and it also enables you to do close-up macro shots too.

The selfie camera in the before 8 uses the latest and greatest Sony imx663, and it delivers excellent selfies while taking up as little space on the display as possible, and it too supports dual pixel autofocus for sharp and crisp images. Beautiful weather we got outside in case you get caught in the rain or accidentally splash, some water on your before 8. Don't worry thanks to an ip68 rating you're good, and can have your peace of mind but hey. What do I know about photography? So don't take it from me. Let me introduce you to kitchen hi Sasha hi, Rio KO is a professional photographer and designer that we've been working with for many years now.

So KO tell us about your experience, working with a before 8. Thank you. Thank you, hi everyone. My name is Gil and I come from Taiwan, I'm a visual artist who works in multiple films. I love travel and I love to create.

I have created many artistic words through my sketches designs and photography. Furthermore, I have been using before for almost 6 years now. Thanks to this, I have been able to easily capture many beautiful and incredible scenery. That touched me deeply to me, photography is neither purely a job nor purely an act of creation. Instead, it represents an accurate record of everything that goes on in my life.

Thanks to ASUS, I had the opportunity to experience the new before 8 in advance for a few weeks, and the size is just perfect for people like me who enjoy outdoor photography. Sometimes when I go climbing, I will see an interesting thing but be unable to protect it right there, but with before 8 I can easily shut it with one hand, while keeping me safe. With the other hand, I'm also very happy with the phone's color presentation and the level of detail. I can capture everything that I could ever want. I would like to share some of my photography taken by before 8 to you.

The frenetic place of working in the city makes me seek out the embrace of nature. Most of the time I like to drive to places where there are fewer people, I feel like I'm leaving behind all my worries, and then I feel free. During this limited time I like to head out to the forests that are away from the city, I'm always full of anticipation for the surprises that mother nature will present to me. I like the size of the before 8, because I can easily take pictures with just one hand when I look up at the treetops to wearing above me in the forest or look down at the babbling broke running over my feet, or even when I clamber up a rocket path, I can take pictures easily when the light becomes dim. I will turn on pro mode and continue taking beautiful photos.

Before 8 now allows users to define their own settings and the cameras promote this means. I can quickly choose my preferred modes when I'm in a pitch black valley. I can rest assured that I will still be able to capture all the complete ring stars in the sky. Sometimes when I'm taking photos I'll be interrupted by a sudden, rainstorm or splashes of water. I might even miss the chance to take some rare and beautiful pictures, but with the before 8 ip68 rating, it doesn't matter if it's sunny or rainy days, but whatever environment I'm in I can take as many pictures as I want and just focus on the scene in front of me.

I hope you enjoyed them. Thank you. Those were some really impressive pictures. Thank you, snowshoe. Next up, let's look at the sound system on the before 8.

When making a phone this compact. There obviously are some compromises we had to make. And yes, as you can see, we didn't have space for a 3.5, millimeter audio jack. I wish I could just magically add one. Oh, that was easy.

Sound quality and volume in a smartphone is something else that ASUS is well known for as well, not having to resort to headphones to watch videos or listen to music in good quality is definitely a big plus and thanks to two large speakers, a service logic, smart amp and direct audio tuning, we make it happen. This brand-new amplifier allows us to achieve a higher dynamic range and notably improved base, precision and volume. It also ensures a stable tonal balance at all volume levels without distortions at low or high volume settings direct has some really dark magic algorithms at play here which allow us to perform, especially well when it comes to lower frequencies, creating a richer, undistorted base experience. Everyone has a different preference for audio. Some of us are very sensitive to specific frequencies, for example.

So naturally, our audio wizard app is still here in the before 8, with four quick profile settings and 10 EQ sliders for manual fine-tuning, but that's not all. For today, you probably expected the before 8 to be more like the before 7, a large phone with innovative camera flip mechanism, a huge display, free of notches or holes, and a massive battery. Both the before, 6 and 7 were very well-received, especially by photographers and creatives. So why don't we refresh this phone series? Well, we do meet the before 8 flip for anyone who uses their selfie camera a lot. There isn't anything on the market that gets close to the resolution and quality of our flip camera.

It also enables several cool new ways of taking pictures and videos that are more immersive and captivating by tracking a face object or slowly, pan the camera. It's almost like a basic built-in gimbals, and we tweaked and refined our flip camera gear and motor system further for an even longer lifetime under a typical scenario where you use it 100 times per day. Furthermore, it's now rated to last. Over 8 years, the before 8 flip comes in two colors that match the overall look of the before 8 galactic black and glacier silver, both use a dual layer, optical coating process. When you look at the galactic black under bright light, you'll notice that it's actually a very dark blue and while the galactic silver is just like the horizon silver on the before 8, with a yellow and blue hue with some angles, the main difference is that on the before 8 flip, these are both glossy making them look a bit futuristic.

Naturally, the before 8 flip bumps up the soc to the latest and greatest snapdragon 888, and just like on the ROG phone 5 and before 8, the 8 flip uses the fastest supported LP ddr5 memory running at 6400 megabits per second, that's a nice bump over the 5500 megabytes per second in the before 7 and most other phones on the market. Today, like I mentioned thanks to the camera system, you get an uninterrupted NATO edge, 6.67-inch, Samsung AMOLED display with vivid colors silky, smooth responsiveness, no notch no selfie cam hole. What's new on the eight flip is that we moved the fingerprint sensor from the power button on the side. The eight flip now has the same in display fingerprint sensor as on the before 8 and the same 5 000 William hour battery is back in the 8 flip enough to get you even through the most active days and possibly even two days. Battery anxiety is a term before 7 and now before 8 flip users are probably not going to be familiar with, and just like on our other models.

We have a set of system modes that either give you a performance or battery life boost on both the before 8 and before 8 flip. We have two sim slots, but the before 8 flip can do even more with two sim slots and a micro SD slot so free in total. Instead of carrying a work and personal phone, you can slot in your work and personal sim cards into the same phone, and you can choose when to mute, calls on each of those two sims and thanks to a micro, SD card slot. You cannot just extend your storage, no matter what happens at any time. You can always just pop out the SD card and have all your data.

Do you want to know more about the selfie camera well, which one because there are three to choose from? We got a 64 megapixel mix 686, wide camera, a 12 megapixel ultra-wide mix 363 and a telephoto with three times optical zoom. So, like I said, if selfies are your thing, there is no better phone on the market. The before 8 flip can not only rotate this top of the line camera system around to be used for regular shots and videos and selfie pictures and clips the stepper motor is so smooth. You can even take pictures and videos, while it's rotating and in motion, there's also an auto panorama mode in which the camera rotates through several angles automatically and stitches. The pictures together by itself, all you have to do is hold the phone.

Steady, taking panorama. Picture has never been this easy. There isn't just a selfie and the rear camera setting in free angle, shooting mode you can adjust the orientation of the camera freely to find your perfect angle and in quick angle, shooting mode. There are three angles: presets: you can switch to 45, 90 and 135 degrees. With the press of a single button.

You can even adjust those presets to then switch back and forth between your favorite angles with a single tab. Another benefit of the flip system is that front and rear camera shots, look identical since it's the same camera system, so exposure white balance, colors focus, both HDR, it all looks identical, giving you full freedom over how you want to frame a shot and have a scenario and selfie pictures and videos match seamlessly without a sudden, jumping quality, colors and focus back and forth in picture and video compositions, especially in dark and high contrast. HDR situations like night sceneries and sunsets the camera system and the before 8 flip shines and is worlds apart from other selfie cameras. Now an ultra-wide is new, but on the before 8 flip you have an ultra white camera on the front, so you can take ultra-wide selfies with everyone in the shot, even with large groups of people, so long, selfie stick and thanks to automatic phase distortion correction. Everyone looks great, even people, on the edge of the shot in motion tracking mode.

You can lock onto any object or person, and the flip motor then follows automatically up to a full 180 degrees. It even zooms in and out automatically to keep the object in frame. It's almost like a single axis gimbals and allows a really fun and interesting way to shoot short clips, and we added a brand-new feature, object, focus which is ideal for vlogging and show and tell videos in this mode. The camera automatically locks on to the closest object in frame and then follows it as it moves around automatically adjusting the focus. As you can see, our flip camera opens up more possibilities, giving you the freedom to explore new perspectives and get inspired, but again don't take it from me.

We're lucky to have an expert with us here today. Let me welcome Yvonne Jenkins, hi everyone. I would like to introduce a little about myself. First, I've been living in New York city for the past 10 years, working as an independent freelancer, and I also had a full-time job at well-known magnum photos. I'm a photographer artist, video director and creative director, the concept behind my photography comes from the observation in daily life.

Taking pictures using mobile phone is convenient to carry around. It gives me more possibility to capture my daily inspiration. Next, I want to share a little my experience capturing the moment in my trip to ding man Taiwan using before 8 flip when shooting using my mobile phone in the past. My composition, idea and shooting angle are limited to the size of the screen, but when using the camera of simple night flip, it increases the possibility. Simple knight flip, creates a wider variety.

When taking pictures, you can easily capture panoramic image without having to move around. It is very convenient and amazing. When I do self-portrait with a mobile phone in the past, I always use the back camera because of the lower quality of front camera, but with simpleness with camera, I can now flip different places and achieve better self-portrait images. Also, the amazing part is that, when shooting a portrait, simple net flip camera creates beautiful foreground and background bouquet in the same quality of any other profession cameras. The video camera functionality of mobile phone is also a very important part.

For me, the 4k or 8k video format of the before 8 flip allows me to complete a video production with high quality using just my phone. At the same time, the directional microphone enables the surrounding sounds to be completely captured, which means a movie like production can be achieved by just using my mobile phone on top of that because of the building vibration reduction function, the video shooting is very stable and smooth professional photographers can also use the stabilizer alongside to achieve more precise composition. Next, I would like to share a short video enjoy it, my wow. That was really impressive. Thank you.

That was fun. I hope you guys are hooked and can't wait to get your own before, 8 or before 8 flip. Let me bring back SY to unveil the prices. As you can see, before 8 is truly an extraordinary smartphone. Now here is the moment.

Everyone has been waiting for before an in a compact 5.9 inch size with flagship, snapdragon, 888 performance, a 4 000 William hour battery and the ip68 rating will be available starting from 599 and the before 8 flip, with 8 gigabytes of ram and the 256 gigabyte ROM will be available for 7.99 before 8 series will soon be available in numerous places around the world. I hope you are as excited as I am to start using before 8. Thank you. Everyone for joining me today stay tuned for more innovations from us. Let's define ordinary bye.

Source : CNET Highlights