ASUS ZenFone 8 Mini will have a 5.9 “OLED panel and a main processor

Earlier this month, ASUS launched its first flagship phone of the year: the ROG Phone 5. It launched earlier than expected, but it still added many improvements over last year’s ROG Phone. The ROG Phone 5 is not the only flagship phone from ASUS that will be launched in 2021, however. We expect last year’s ZenFone 7 successor to appear this year, and new details we saw from an analysis of the kernel and firmware source code shed some light on what to expect from the ASUS ZenFone 8 series.

For a bit of context, we expect several phones to be launched as part of the ASUS ZenFone 8 series. While last year’s ZenFone 7 added a “Pro” model to the line, it is rumored that the successor will add a “Mini” version that will feature with premium specifications in a more compact format. There is also the mysterious “ASUS ZenFone 8 Flip” that appeared in a Google support document a few days ago, but we do not know whether the rumors “Mini” and “Flip” are really the same. Still, we can expect there to be at least two phones in the ZenFone 8 series, with the kernel source code and firmware files suggesting a possible third model.

Thanks to a tip from the XDA Recognized Developer Freak07, we looked at the source code for the ASUS ROG Phone 5 kernel and found references to three new ASUS phones. The three phones have the code names “SAKE”, “PICASSO” and “VODKA”. For reference, ZenFone series 7 was codenamed “TEQUILA” while ROG Phone 3 and ROG Phone 5 were coded as “OBIWAN” and “ANAKIN” respectively. We also identified a reference to “SAKE_PLUS” and “VODKA_PLUS” in a single file in the kernel source code, but we don’t know if these are really different models, since no other references appear anywhere else.

Although we don’t know which of these three phones belongs to the ASUS ZenFone 8 series, we found explicit references to ASUS ZenFone 8 and ASUS ZenFone 8 Flip in the latest version of the ASUS PixelMaster Camera application. However, all three phones must be based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 mobile platform, at least according to the kernel source code.

At the very least, we expect “SAKE” to be the supposed ZenFone 8 “Mini”, as it is defined with a 5.92 ″ OLED display and is referred to as a “small phone” in ASUS software. The panel’s configuration file also mentions that it will support a refresh rate of 120 Hz and full HD + resolution (2400 × 1080). As for the cameras, we found only two image sensors: a Sony IMX686 64 MP and a new Sony IMX663.

On the other hand, the “PICASSO” seems to have the same panel as the ZenFone 7 series: a 6.67 ″ OLED panel made by Samsung with full HD + resolution. PICASSO also has camera hardware very similar to the ZenFone 7 series, with the exception of an additional 24MP image sensor that is strangely defined as the “front” sensor in the kernel. Although, given the strangeness of the ZenFone’s flip camera setup, it may not mean that it actually has a traditional front camera. Finally, we don’t really know anything about the supposed “VODKA” device. It is the most elusive of the three, with few references to it both in the kernel source code and in the latest firmware.

Here is a summary of the information we learned about the three phones:

Thanks to PNF Software for providing us with a license to use JEB Decompiler, a professional-grade reverse engineering tool for Android apps.