'Asus ZenFone 2' Release Date & Specs: Deluxe Special Edition Features Massive Storage, New Backplate Design

Asus releases a new version of the ZenFone 2 with upgrades inside and out.

The Verge reports that the new model, dubbed as the Deluxe Special Edition, comes with a fancy back panel — designed with a polygonal pattern — which is now quite the trendy among computer peripherals. Techno Buffalo adds that this funky new design comes in two colors: Drift Silver and Carbon Night.

It also comes with a whopping 256GB of internal memory, which is twice larger than what's found in other expensive gadgets from Apple and Samsung, and even bigger than other entry-level notebooks.

The downside is the new model is released only in Brazil, and no word has been given regarding its release in the U.S. Its arrival in the U.S. would be given a warm welcome, as the earlier version of the ZenFone 2 has received good reviews for what it gives to users, according to a separate report from The Verge.

According to the news outlet, the earlier version came in plastic with no metal finishes whatsoever. There's a 5.5-inch 1080p panel display that will do fine for games, video streaming and many more.

Asus also put in tap-to-wake and tap-to-sleep gestures as well as the option to just draw letters on the screen to use applications.

Asus has designed the ZenFone 2 to be beautiful, with edges measuring only 3.9 mm. It also has a few functional buttons on the back panel for volume control and camera. 

Engineered to churn out maximum power, under the hood, the ZenFone 2 features a 64-bit 2.3GHz Super Quad-Core Intel® Atom^TM Z3580 processor. It is the world's first smartphone that comes with a dual-channel 4GB DDR3 RAM. The smartphone also features a maximum download speed capacity of up to 250/Mbit/s and a touch response time of 60 ms.

The phone comes with a rear 13-megapixel camera and a front-mounted, five-megapixel camera. The 13-megapixel camera comes with various options, including an HDR option and a Super Resolution mode that combines four 13-megapixel shots into one 52-megapixel shot. 

Asus' ZenFone 2 also boasts a fast-charging capacity that gives 60% battery capacity after the phone is charged for just 39 minutes. It also has a dual-SIM and dual-active technology.

The phone is running on Android 5 Lollipop, which Asus has customized heavily to produce the ZenUI, a highly customized operating system that offers advanced features to its users.

On the other side, the phone also has a significant amount of bloatware, its own share of camera problems and a simple, generic design. But still, the phone came at a very affordable price of $200 to $300 with the capacity to handle all applications that any user wants to install.