Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra smartphone gets Snapdragon 8 Elite and AI by Meta

Asus has introduced its new flagship smartphone, the Zenfone 12 Ultra, changing its usual announcement schedule – this time the device was shown in February, instead of July, like its predecessor.

The main update concerns the processor: the Zenfone 12 Ultra received a Snapdragon 8 Elite, which provides a 45% performance increase for the CPU, 40% for the GPU and the same for the NPU. Combined with 16 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage up to 512 GB, the smartphone offers a high level of power.

The accelerated NPU is especially useful for built-in AI, which works locally without connecting to cloud services. The device is equipped with the Meta Llama 3 8B model, which provides advanced text processing functions, including summarization. The improved AI Call Translator 2.0 performs real-time voice translation, and the updated Voice Recorder is able to identify different speakers, prepare short summaries from recordings, and automatically translate speech.

Other features

The camera has also received serious improvements. The main module is now equipped with a Sony Lytia-700 sensor, which replaced the IMX890, and the new hybrid stabilization system version 4 corrects movements by ±5°, which is 66% more effective than the previous solution. The 32-megapixel telephoto module offers 3x optical zoom and up to 30x digital zoom. It complements the ultra-wide-angle camera system with a viewing angle of 120°. The front camera also received a 32-megapixel RGBW sensor.

The display is a 6.78-inch OLED from Samsung with LTPO and a dynamic refresh rate of 1 to 120 Hz (144 Hz is available in supported games). The panel reaches a peak brightness of 2500 nits and is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2.

The battery consists of two cells with a total capacity of 5500 mAh, supports wired charging at 65 W (full charge in 39 minutes) and wireless charging at 15 W. The smartphone is equipped with stereo speakers, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and Dirac Virtuo technology.

The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra is certified according to the IP68 standard and supports two SIM cards with 5G and eSIM. In Europe, the model has already gone on sale at a price of €1100, offering three color options: Sage Green, Ebony Black and Sakura White.