Qualcomm launches Asus-made flagship smartphone at $1,499

New Delhi: Chip-maker Qualcomm and Taiwanese tech brand Asus on Thursday introduced a $1,499 phone that is powered by Snapdragon 888 chipset and will be available from August for the ‘Insiders’ community.

Weighing 210 grams in Midnight Blue colour, the smartphone (16GB +512GB) is designed and manufactured by ASUS for the Insiders community, and houses custom premium earbuds from Master & Dynamic, a Quick Charge 5 adaptor, charging cables and a protective case.

The 6.78-inch smartphone with Samsung AMOLED screen and a 144Hz screen refresh rate offers an elite gaming and breakthrough audio and sound experience.

Mike Roberts, Qualcomm’s VP of product marketing, said during a presentation that

“never before has such a complete Snapdragon experience been brought together in one single amazing device”.

With QuickCharge 5 and a charger in the box, the smartphone charges at 65W and claims to give full charge in 30 minutes. It houses a 4000mAh high-capacity battery.

The dual-SIM device comes with Master & Dynamic Snapdragon Sound earbuds that support 24-bit, 96kHz audio and high-quality voice codecs.

On the back, there’s a second-generation Qualcomm ultrasonic fingerprint sensor.

The rear camera setup has main Sony flagship IMX686 64 MP image sensor, a 12 MP Sony Ultrawide Camera with dual pixel image sensor and an 8MP Telephoto Camera with 3x optical zoom and up to 12x total zoom.

The front camera has a 24MP sensor.

The smartphone runs Android 11 and offers 8K UHD video recording at 30 fps for main rear camera and 4K UHD video at 30 /60 fps for main rear camera.