Asus Zenfone 9
Price: £699 from fave.co/3zPj2jw
Small phones don’t sell. Or so goes the accepted wisdom, especially in a year when it looks likely that Apple will drop the Mini from the iPhone 14 series, and Sony killed off its diminutive Xperia 5 line. No-one told Asus that though, so it’s bringing back its compact Zenfone flagship – and in fact the Zenfone 9 is even smaller and shorter than last year’s Zenfone 8.
To be fair, the company’s not alone. While Apple and Sony may be moving away from one-handed handsets, Asus itself points out that it’s facing renewed competition from the Samsung Galaxy S22 and Xiaomi 12, both of which are smaller than their predecessors.
The Zenfone 9 is smaller than either though, and thanks to Asus’s efforts to still squeeze in flagship specs this may well be the go-to small phone for Android users – here’s why.
DESIGN
There’s a lot to like about the way the Zenfone 9 looks. The obvious starting place is the size – thanks to using a small 5.9in display this is a small phone by modern standards, and at 169g it’s also impressively lightweight.
At 9.1mm thick it’s not the thinnest phone around, but you’d certainly not call it chunky, and that very slight extra thickness feels irrelevant once you factor in how compact the phone is
