While some manufacturers offer phones with varying sizes, chipsets, and performance, Asus has a different approach. Two phones for two markets, both alike in more ways than one. The gaming-focused ROG Phone 9 Pro was released in November 2024. It’s now joined by the consumer-focused Zenfone 12 Ultra. How successful is Asus’ almost-twins strategy?
The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra and the Asus ROG 9 Pro
If you are looking for the ultimate performance in today’s smartphones, it’s hard to look beyond the various gaming smartphones. Typically tuned to deliver the highest performance using the least amount of power, fast refreshing displays and incredible touchscreen accuracy; and to do all this while keeping the handset as cool as possible, they represent peak mobile performance.
Asus’ Republic of Gamers brand has offered gaming smartphones for many years now, the ROG Phone 9 Pro Phone is this year’s offering. At the time, I wrote that some of the design choices moved the ROG Phone 9 Pro away from being a pure gaming phone and more towards something that could have a dual purpose and serve as a regular yet high-end flagship.
Now, we have the other side of the coin. Asus’ Zenfone 12 Ultra is a your high-end flagship that will happily run the top-of-the-line Android games with little fuss. Two unique phones taking on the market as one.
The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra Hardware Feels Familiar
The Aus Zenfone 12 Ultra and the ROG Phone 9 Pro share many of their specifications. The generous 16 GB of RAM carries over, as does 512 GB of storage. The gaming roots’ demand for no-lag audio means that the rarely spotted 3.5 mm headphone jack can be found on the Zenfone and the ROG.
Both come with Qualcomm’s latest flagship chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. This is pretty much de rigeur for premium handsets, although the pairing with substantial memory and storage will help deliver the speed consumers want.
It’s not a complete 1 to 1 relationship – the Airtrigger shoulder buttons used by gamers are not present on the top edge of the ZenFone 12 Ultra. Neither is the second USB port used by the ROG 9 to support USB accessories when a first- or third-party controller is connected to the gaming phone.
Both come with a fast refresh display, but the ROG gets a bit more capability with 185 Hz, while the Zenfone goes up to 144 Hz. Both phones come with the same core camera lenses; a 50-megapixel main camera, a 32-megapixel telephoto, and a 13-megapixel ultrawide. Battery-wise the Zenfone 12 Ultra is actually the smaller battery at 5,500 mAh compared to 5,800 mAh on the ROG. I suspect this is to keep the weight down on the Zenfone 12, given it is 7g lighter while being only fractionally wider.
While there are minor changes, they are more at the component level and can be tweaked nearer the end of the design process. Fundamentally, these two phones have so much in common that they look like the same base machine before customisation.
Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra’s Clean Software
The difference comes in software, and that difference is mainly up to the end user.
Unlike some manufacturers, Asus has chosen to allow extensive user interface customisation. It can be overwhelming at first dealing with all of the options and tweaks; you’ll experiment with a setting, return to the home screen to see the impact, and return to the customisation dialog to get things just right. When you finish this UI loop, you have a phone set up for your tastes. Contrast that with iOS, where the iPhone will struggle to break free of Apple’s way of interfacing with your phone.
It won’t come as a surprise that the app launcher that turns the ROG Phone into a gaming platform isn’t here. Beyond that, Asus’ minimal approach to software is on show, with just Facebook, Facebook Messenger, and Instagram pre-loaded onto the handset.
What has been added to the mix, and this won’t come as a surprise to anyone watching any smartphone ecosystem, is AI. You have the tools you need to edit photos (including Magic Fill and Unblur), plus AI panning and Portrait Video to improve your captured video. You also have the text tools seen in other handsets, with article and document summaries sitting alongside transcription and translation on calls.
Following in the footsteps of last year’s Zenfone 11 Ultra, Asus’ implementation of Android remains one of the cleanest implementations on the commercial market.
Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra’s Android Flaw
Samsung’s Galaxy range of phones, Google’s Pixel phones and Apple’s iPhones all come in varying sizes and price points. Asus has taken another direction where a common core is developed and subtle changes in the components and the software mark out differences between two extremes of the spectrum. On one side is gaming, and on the other side is day-to-day. Both phones can accomplish what the other one does, but both have their own speciality.
By keeping the base, the two phones have little differentiation between them. It’s not a huge jump to argue that they are essentially the same phone smartly targeted at different parts of a common market. And while it’s apparent to those of us who have an intense eye on the smartphone market, I’m not so sure if “it’s the same phone” will have a significant impact on the general consumers. Asus has a gaming phone and a regular phone, so which one interests you? Consumers get the choice, while Asus reaps the benefits of a “2 for 1” approach.
The Zenfone 12 Ultra is a competent premium smartphone that hits all the right notes in terms of hardware, matching and in some cases exceeding the competition. Yet the biggest flaw is not how close it is to the ROG Phone 9 Pro. Nor is it the higher than average price. The biggest flaw is Asus’ commitment to just two years of Android updates. When the competition is offering seven years, there’s no sense of longevity for those who buy either of 2025’s Asus handsets.
Disclaimer: Asus provided an Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra for evaluaton purposes.
