It’s a big year for the Zenfone series. After several years as a compact flagship, ASUS announced the Zenfone 11 Ultra back in March as a full-sized flagship, with the phone sporting an impressive spec list. It’s now arrived in Australia, and it’s time to take it for a spin.
The phone has been positioned as having premium design, a flagship camera, AI features, and a longer battery life and it’s priced like a flagship at $1,599, but it ticks all the boxes when it comes to specs.
There’s a large 6.78-inch LTPO OLED display on the front and it’s powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 gen 3 with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of on-board storage. There’s up to 26 hours of battery life promised and fast charging for the 5,500mAh battery onboard.
The Zenfone 11 Ultra also includes an impressive triple rear camera array that finally brings back the telephoto option that dropped off as ASUS pursued smaller devices, and there’s a 32MP selfie camera embedded in the display.
I’ve spent a couple of weeks with the Zenfone 11 Ultra and here’s how it went.
It’s hard to deny there’s heavy resemblance to the Zenfone 11 Ultra’s stablemate, the ROG Phone 8, though the style choices on both phones make it clear which market they’re aimed at and the ROG Phone 8 adds in more performance-centric features like air triggers and more.
Overall, the Zenfone 11 Ultra is a big phone, and it’s also decently solid to feel in your hand. It has a heft to it and feels quite dense, though it’s still lighter than a Galaxy S24 Ultra and only just heavier than an iPhone 15 Pro Max and Pixel 8 Pro.
While ASUS announced a slew of colours for the Zenfone 11 Ultra back in March, only the Eternal Black and Skyline Blue have made it to Australia. I quite like the Skyline Blue which ASUS have sent over for review, it has a satin finish on the rear with the ASUS Zen logo embossed across the lower half which adds a certain flair when the light hits it just right.
It’s hard to ignore that massive camera continent island in the upper left corner which houses the triple camera array. The bump stands out fairly significantly though the width means it’s fairly stable when you place it on a desk, though it can rock a little if you use it while laying flat.
Thankfully the camera bump is mostly nullified by the included shell case. It’s a fairly basic case, though it does give some protection for the phone while leaving the bottom and sides open for access to ports and buttons. It’s a fairly basic plastic shell, so it does pick up some fingerprints, but they wipe off and I like the continuation of the ASUS logo on the rear of the shell.
The power button and volume rocker are on the right, with the dual nano-SIM tray on the bottom with a headphone jack (That’s a win!) and a left oriented USB-C port on either side.
The USB-C port orientation is a holdover from the ROG Phone 8 design, though I’d love if they’d kept the additional side mounted USB-C port from the ROG Phone 8 as well – which would have been a great reason for the left side of the shell case being left open.
The big 6.78-inch is bright, and there’s impressively small bezels around every side of the phone. There’s a small punch-hole notch in the display which is barely noticeable, and of course an in-display fingerprint scanner – which works fairly well.
Overall, the design of the Zenfone 11 Ultra is about what you’d expect for a large phone. It’s comfortable to hold, yet feels solid with a definite heft to it, abd I can’t say I won’t miss the days of the more compact Zenfone flagships.
In Australia, the Zenfone 11 Ultra is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor with 12GB Of LPDDR5 RAM and 256GB of UFS 4.0 storage. On the wireless side, it comes with Wifi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support, as well as 5G connectivity.
There are two models of the Zenfone 11 Ultra being sold, the model for Australia with 12GB RAM/256GB storage, and a more powerful Zenfone 11 Ultra in other markets with 512GB storage/16GB RAM. ASUS have sent over the international version for review – and while it’s more memory and storage, it’s going to handle very similarly..
The ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra is a pretty powerful combination of hardware, and it shows in the performance of the phone. It’s slick and powerful with no lag or performance issues on anything I threw at it.
While it’s not a ‘gaming’ phone like the ROG Phone 8, it’s definitely more than capable of running anything you throw at it. From Genshin Impact through to casual mobile games, it eats them up with no issues.
Of course I ran it through 3DMark and Geekbench, and here’s how they went – but remember this is the international model with more memory.
Connection wise, the Zenfone 11 Ultra has a decent download speed on 5G – though of course this will depend on your location and your carrier. Phone calls were fine, though a little patchy due to me driving on hands-free during some calls.
The 6.78-inch flexible AMOLED display on the front is excellent, and on the audio side, there’s a downward firing speaker which pairs with the earpiece for stereo sound.
The display has minimal bezels around it and it offers great colour reproduction, contrast, and with a max peak brightness of 2500 nits, it’s easily seen in full sunlight.
The phone has an LTPO (low-temperature polycrystalline oxide) AMOLED display, capable of refresh up to 120Hz. ASUS have also worked some magic with their Game Genie software to ramp up to 144Hz in-game. While I can’t tell between 120-144Hz, the display is super smooth when scrolling or playing games, so it looks fantastic.
There’s a fast, responsive fingerprint sensor in the lower third which works really well.
On the audio front, the sound from the phone is relatively decent for the small speakers used with fairly decent mids and high-range audio, though obviously lacking in a little base.
The only bonus on the audio side is the inclusion of the headphone jack on the bottom, which is definitely a rarity on phones these days.
Asus’ camera credentials on paper are excellent. The triple rear camera array is headlined by a 50MP main sensor, a 32MP sensor behind a 3x optical zoom and 13MP ultra-wide camera with 120˚ Field of View. The front camera is a 32MP sensor which sits in a punch hole notch in the display on the front.
The camera setup on the Zenfone 11 Ultra is for the most part pretty good. The main 50MP sensor stacks images by binning them, effectively stacking four images to create one. As a result, your 50MP shot ends up at 12.5MP, though with an improved quality image.
The camera system works well across most light conditions, with the 50MP sensor taking excellent, clear shots – thanks in part to the 6-axis gimbal on the main sensor which enables it to take a crisp shot, or even video, each time. Night shots are good, without being excellent.
The 3x optical zoom is decent quality, though of course a little underwhelming with 5x optical zoom fairly standard in flagship phones across the board. That said, it’s a 3x Optical on a 32MP sensor and the shots offer some pretty decent quality. The optical zoom can be enhanced by a decent optical zoom. The ultra-wide sensor at 13MP is there. It’s not obviously your highest quality shot, though it does a decent job – and obviously gives you a much expanded field of view to capture more in the image.
There’s a large 5,500mAh battery in the ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra which ASUS says can last over 26 hours of regular use which is pretty spot on, though I was often well into day 2 before needing a charge in my testing.
The phone supports 65 Watt ‘HyperCharge’ wired charging and 15 Watt wireless charging. There is of course no charger included in the box, just a USB-C cable for connecting to any existing chargers, or your PC. You can of course purchase an ASUS 65W charger for $99 from their store, but if you do have a PD compliant USB Type-C charger, you should be fine.
If you do have a compatible charger, you can see some very fast charging on the Zenfone 11 Ultra. The phone is easily charged from dead flat to 100% full in just under an hour, and in a mere 5 minutes you can get 23% charge.
Launching with Android 14 and running ASUS’ ZenUI, the phone comes out of the box with the December 1st, 2023 security patch. As I was about to publish this review, I received the latest firmware update, which brought the security patching to June 5, 2024.
With the new firmware, the phone doesn’t seem any faster, and the update information simply lists the security update as well as ‘Optimisations for enhancing performance and stability’, and a fix for a gallery editing issue. Phone calls are still good, and the 5G speed tests I ran are similar to before the update.
The phone includes two years of OS updates, which should see the phone updated to Android 16 in 2026, as well as four years of security updates.
The introduction of AI to platforms has been a big trend this year, and ASUS have added AI features to ZenUI.
AI features include an option for speaking with people in different languages over the phone or texting with AI Call Translator, or AI transcript for converting voice memos to text and AI Wallpaper generation. While I didn’t get a chance to try out the AI Translator, the AI Wallpaper generation is fun, though ultimately I went back to my standard phone background.
There’s built-in optimised AI search across the phone which helps translate natural language input to find apps, settings and photos faster. I didn’t particularly use the AI Search, finding it to be about on-par with previous search functions.
The AI Noise Cancellation feature works relatively well, though can be a little over-aggressive. The AI sometimes cancelled my voice out as opposed to wind or background noise – but overall it works quite well.
There’s a lot to like about the ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra if you like a big phone with a great display, excellent battery life and a decent camera.
The downsides are on the size, with the Zenfone 11 Ultra a very thick, and tall phone. For anyone with smaller hands it’s definitely a ‘Big’ adjustment. There’s also the underwhelming software support, especially given Samsung and Google are offering 7 years of OS and Security updates.
ASUS have come a long way when it comes to the software experience with ZenUI becoming one of the cleaner, ‘better’, skins on offer for Android, it’s just not supported for long enough.
Overall, the Zenfone 11 Ultra is a great large phone for anyone wanting something with a large display, great performance and a camera you can rely on. The only downside is for the small phone aficionados, as we mourn the compact Zenfone models of the past.
You can check it out over on the ASUS eshop, or through JB Hifi.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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