Asus Zenfone 8 to launch in Brazil: No word on India launch yet

Asus’s compact flagship smartphone – the Zenfone 8 has been in the news even before it was launched globally. Touted to be Android’s response to Apple’s Mini flagship phone, the Zenfone 8 was launched in May and is now launching in Brazil this month.

According to a Twitter post by Asus Brazil, the Zenfone 8 will debut in the Latin American country on November 4. According to some local publication, its bigger sibling - Zenfone 8 Flip might get introduced as well, though the teaser shared by the company doesn’t give any such hints.

In terms of specifications, the phone comes with a 5.9-inch Super AMOLED display sporting 120Hz refresh rate, Snapdragon 888 SoC at the core, IP68 rating, up to 256GB of storage and 16GB of RAM, dual stereo speakers, 64MP camera, and a 4,000mAh battery pack to power the phone.

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There is very little chance that the Brazilian version might be any different than the global version. Even though the Snapdragon 888+ SoC has already been introduced, looking at the chipset crunch it is unlikely that the Taiwanese company may even think of updating the chipset at the core.

In terms of pricing, the global avatar of the Asus Zenfone 8 starts at €499 for the 8GB + 128GB variant. The Brazilian priming is expected to remain similar as Brazil is also a price-sensitive market like India.

Hello! Hello!! India calling... 

Looks like that's one call that authorities at ASUS are turning a deaf ear, at least for the present moment. We sought to get some inputs from the local office, but turned up empty. All know now is that the India launch was expected to follow the global one, but the company decided to defer it owing to the deadly impact of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

While that decision was appreciated by everyone back then, it’s been over six months and there is no official news of the smartphone launching in the country. We did hear that the company had plans to introduce the Asus 8Z (as it will be called) if the launch happens during the festive sales and had seeded the phones to media for reviews. However, with Diwali just around the corner there is still no news around the phones India launch.

In this day and age wherein consumers are used to seeing brands updating their flagship lineup every quarter and adding a new budget phone almost every month, Asus’s last smartphone, barring the ROG Phone lineup, was introduced back in June 2019 and the budget lineup hasn’t been refreshed since December 2018.

While the chipset shortage may have derailed most plans, this yawning gap between the two launches and no clear communication will only hurt Asus’s reputation as a smartphone brand among the handful of loyal users who are still waiting for the company to launch its phones in the country.

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