The ASUS is having a good time this year with its popular ZenFone series. With the rising competition from its Chinese rivals, ASUS is taking on the cheap and cheerful segment with a new affordable smart phone line up.
Immediately after Meizu announced its m1 Note that offers impressive hardware for a low price, ASUS has come out with a Pegasus X002 – A 5″ dual-SIM 4G LTE smart phone that’s going for sale at 799 CNY (about RM449) in China.
The design looks similar to its ZenFone 5 as the front has a 5″ IPS display that does HD 720p (1280×720) resolution. Instead of an Intel Atom or Qualcomm processor, it runs on a 64-bit MediaTek MT6732 1.5GHz Quad-Core (Cortex-A53) unit that’s mated to 2GB of RAM.
On-board it gets a generous 16GB of storage and there’s also a microSD expansion slot that accept cards up to 32GB in capacity. For taking pictures, it gets a familiar 8MP f/2.0 camera while the front has a 5.0MP f/2.2 shooter for selfies with a 80° wide angle lens. The main camera apparently has a ultra-picture mode which is able to produce higher resolution images through up-scaling up to 30MP.
The Pegasus X002 also has the usual WiFi 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0 and there’s also 4G LTE support but it is compatible only with China’s 4G TD-LTE and 3G TD-SCDMA standards. Keeping it running for long is a 2,500mAh capacity battery which is quite generous in its class.
Out of the box, it runs on Android 4.4 KitKat with ASUS very own ZenUI. The device will be going on sale in China and so far there’s no word of it being sold overseas. For its sub-RM500 price, the Taiwanese brand is aiming to challenge the Chinese brands at their own game.
