A new ASUS smartphone with Snapdragon branding pops up on TENAA

XDA

Mysterious ASUS phone pops up with Qualcomm's "Snapdragon" branding

By Kishan Vyas

Published Jun 2, 2021

A new ASUS smartphone has just been certified by China's TENAA. Interestingly, the device features the Snapdragon branding on the back.

ASUS recently added two new flagships to its arsenal with the launch of the ZenFone 8 and ZenFone 8 Flip. But it seems the company could be working on yet another powerhouse of a device.

A new ASUS phone has stopped by China’s TENAA certification site, which in turn has revealed key details about this upcoming smartphone, including some of its specifications, design, and model number. The model number ASUS_I007D matches the device code-named VODKA that we spotted inside the kernel source code of the ASUS ROG Phone 5 in March. Alongside VODKA, we had also discovered two new devices codenamed SAKE and PICASSO, which later launched as the ASUS ZenFone 8 and ZenFone 8 Flip, respectively. This leads us to believe that VODKA (ASUS_I007D) could be part of the ZenFone 8 series. But there’s a possibility this device could also turn out to be the rumored Qualcomm-ASUS gaming phone.

As you can see in the renders below, the phone has a prominent Snapdragon logo and branding right in the middle, which we don't usually see on a smartphone. To recall, a report from DigiTimes last year reported that Qualcomm and ASUS had joined forces to develop a gaming-centric smartphone and that it would be powered by Snapdragon 875 SoC (do note that Snapdragon 875 later launched as Snapdragon 888). As per the report, this jointly developed gaming phone was supposed to debut by the end of 2020 and start shipping in 2021. We never heard anything about this gaming device after that report, but it's possible what we're looking at in this TENAA listing could be the jointly developed gaming phone from Qualcomm and ASUS. One possibility for the odd Snapdragon branding on the back is that ASUS might have used a prototype device for certification.

In any case, the TENAA listing reveals that this upcoming ASUS phone measures 172.92 x 77.33 x 9.55mm in size and weighs 217.7g. It features a 6.78-inch OLED display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset, a 3840mAh battery (1920mAh x 2), 16GB of RAM, 512GB flash storage, a triple rear camera setup comprising a 64MP and 12MP shooters, a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, and runs Android 11.

Thanks Wichaya Poka for the tip!