Credit: Robert Triggs / Android Authority
I don’t know about you, but I miss the days of a burgeoning and diverse smartphone market — not the hegemony of copy-paste phones we see today. News that ASUS hit pause on smartphone development, quite possibly for good, has perhaps just ruined our chance at seeing another novel and brilliant compact smartphone. It’s genuinely disappointing.
Ever since the colorful little ASUS Zenfone 10 launched back in mid-2023, fans (myself included) have wondered if we’ll ever see another compact phone of this quality. 2024 slunk by with little more than a teaser of future possibilities. Instead, ASUS banked hard on the gargantuan Zenfone 11 Ultra. 2025 passed with virtual silence, and now it seems that any residual hope has been snuffed out.