Phones will include cases for high end products according to Asus CEO Jerry Shen

Jerry Shen, Asus CEO, discussed the cases for the Zenfone 3 at the recent investors conference. He used the word “transparent” which quite possibly means a clear plastic shell case that will not cover up the design and look of the Zenfone 3.

During the same question period, Shen also indicated that some of the more expensive Zenfone 3 products, they will include a case. So to us, this would include phones like the Zenfone 3 Ultra and Zenfone 3 Deluxe. Sounds good but we should definitely wait to see if Asus includes cases in the same box. They still need to make money afterall.

for high end products, phones will come with cases

for mainstream products, cases will have to be bought separately

Asus has bundled their ZenPad Theatre with a case and in some countries the ZenPad S 8.0 (Z580CA) was bundled with the Clutch Case. Thus we have no reason to doubt the information that premium Zenfone 3 phones will have a case included. It is most likely to vary from country to country however.

zenfone-3-case

 

Asus CEO says revenue from selling 5 to 10 power banks equals 1 phone

At the most recent Asus investors conference, CEO Jerry Shen was asked about Zenfone accessories. Here is what he said:

power bank is the best seller among all accessories and sells very well in many countries

5 to 10 power banks would contribute the same amount of revenue as 1 phone

our expectation is that in the future contribution from power bank could reach more than 5% – in Q3 / Q4 maybe the range will be 5%

Jerry Shen went on to say that their sales of the power bank is a few hundred thousand at this point. Certainly the power bank for Asus is the best selling accessory. This makes sense. A power bank is very handy and it means that you can push your phone without having to worry so much about running out of battery and having to find a plug-in power source.

asus-power-bank

[source: Asus]

Did everyone miss the Zenfone 3 in this video?

With everything going on in this Asus Computex 2016 teaser we can understand how people may have missed this. The lady in the video answers a phone. Can we guess what it might be? It must be an Asus phone and it certainly doesn’t appear to be an older model. Our best guess? It’s the Zenfone 3 folks.

zenfone-3-spotted-in-teaser

Is that just any phone? Let’s look at what has been found on the Zenfone 3 so far and see what matches.

markings-on-bottom-zenfone-3

So based on an early Red Dot leak of the Zenfone 3, the two markings or lines or strips along the bottom of the phone says it’s a match.

We can also look at the side buttons which are shown only briefly and partially during the Computex 2016 teaser video.

zenfone-3-side-buttons-teaser

What we see in the screenshot above is that there is distinctly two different buttons along the side. The button(s) closest to the top of the phone are cutoff in the trailer screenshot, but you can see something is there.

side-buttons-zenfone-3

Again, proof positive on the likelihood of the phone in the video being the flagship model of the Zenfone 3.

 

Asus Teaser Video:

Asus puts out another teaser. Is it the Zenfone 3 Deluxe?

What to make of this and why do we suggest Zenfone 3 Deluxe here? The only number that makes sense is the 23 which we believe is 23MP. We can then look at the recent Antutu benchmark results which indicate a 4GB packing Asus phone with a 23MP camera. We have made an educated guess that the Antutu information is the Deluxe model because we believe the flagship Zenfone 3 (ZE552KL) will come with 3GB RAM. So we can also say the “4” from this teaser could be indicative of the 4GB of RAM on the Deluxe model.

So the other numbers in this teaser? That is anyone’s guess.

We have talked about the Zenfone 3 Deluxe being the successor to the Asus Padfone. So in theory the “3” could mean phone, tablet, laptop. The triple threat as it were.

 

Galaxy S7 vs. Zenfone 3

We are obviously a couple weeks from being able to make a Samsung Galaxy S7 vs. Zenfone 3 comparison. When we do, we expect the price comparison to be a win for Asus and by a good margin at that.

With the various models of Zenfone 3, we will keep this comparison to the ZE552KL model as they share the same size screen.