In a few days, on May 12th, Asustek will reveal its next flip camera smartphone, dubbed the Asus ZenFone 8. It should come in three models – the standard version, the Pro version, and the ASUS ZenFone 8 mini.
Today Weibo blogger reported that the Asus ZenFone 8 will have a 5,9-inch AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. Under the hood, the phone will have the flagship chip Qualcomm Snapdragon 888. The latter will be accompanied by a combination of LPDDR5 + UFS 3.1 storage. Before that, our hero already appeared on GeekBench with the specified functions. The tested version had 8 GB of RAM. But there are many analysts who believe that ZenFone 8 devices will have up to 16GB of RAM. The operating system of the device is Android 11. In any case, in the test mode, the phone scored 1124 points and 3669 points in the single-core and multi-core tests, respectively.
However, it will be the Asus ZenFone 8 mini and not the standard version. and it will become an Android alternative to the iPhone 12 mini. We also know that this model will have a 64-megapixel Sony IMX686 sensor.
The battery capacity should be 4000 mAh. And this will be enough for a smartphone with a small screen to provide at least a whole day of endurance on a single charge.
While this sounds pretty exciting, we have serious doubts about whether small-screen smartphones have a future. But our assumptions are not groundless. We mean it Nikkei Asia who recently reported that Apple plans to reduce the production capacity of the iPhone 12 mini. Compared to December 2019, the Cupertino-based company cut about 20% of production orders for the iPhone. And the iPhone 12 mini accounts for most of the decline. Demand for the iPhone 12 mini is "well below Apple's initial expectations."
Apple's original goal was to sell 96 million iPhones in the first half of 2021. This includes sales from the iPhone 12 series and older models such as the iPhone 11 and iPhone SE. But the goal was later reduced to 75 million iPhones. Of course, that's still slightly higher than iPhone shipments in the same period last year.
But it's not just Apple's problem. Its suppliers were also badly affected. Samsung's global small OLED shipments in January fell 9% from the previous month to 45 million units. The Korean manufacturer believes that this is closely related to the decline in sales of the iPhone 12 mini. An industry insider said Apple is likely to compensate Samsung for missing OLED panel procurement targets.
