SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The recently released ASUS smartphone zenfone 2 has hit a new price/perf benchmark point with an MSRP of $199 but mid-high range specs:
-4G LTE
-Quadcore x86 processor
-5.5 inch IPS 1080P screen with gorilla glass
-2GB of RAM
-16GB storage
-3000 mAh battery
The low price is in part because Intel has been desperately trying to get a foothold in the mobile market and likely playing contra-revenue games. Unlike past low-cost options like the oneplus phone, this phone has wide release being sold at online retailers like Amazon.
Is this setting a new standard in low-cost, high-performance phones, or is this a temporary ploy until Intel starts charging for their SoCs? Will this lead to a price war between Mediatek, Qualcomm, and Intel? All of which have already released phones this year for the North American marketplace supporting the 4G spectrum. How low-priced can these smartphones with laptop-like specs go?
Reviewed here: http://anandtech.com/show/9251/the-asus-zenfone-2-review
[Editor's Comment: Original Submission]
(Score: 2) by TK on Friday May 29 2015, @09:33PM
I'm kind of excited about this, to be honest. It's at least double all of my current phone's specs (Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini with CyanogenMod11), for less than what I paid for this one. That being said, I am not an early adopter. About a year from now, when the CyanogenMod teams have made a stable and popular release for this phone, I'll probably pick up one of the $300 models, install CM and roll with it. Provided it lives up to this hype. I could use a bigger screen and more RAM anyway.
If not this, then the next best combination of supported, powerful and cheap that's available in 2016.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum