Asus ZenFone 4 Max officially launches in US and Canada, large battery included

Asus just announced that one of its newest smartphones, theZenFone 4 Max, is now officially available to buy in the US and Canada. The handset is soldunlocked (1-year North American warranty included), costing $199 in the US, and $299 CAD in Canada.

Far from being a high-end smartphone, the Asus ZenFone 4 Maxis made for customers in need of an affordable handset with long battery life.The device packs a very generous 5,000 mAh battery - according to Asus, thiscan provide up to 22 hours of video playback, or up to 26 hours of Wi-Fi webbrowsing. With these figures in mind, we're assuming that the battery will haveno problems lasting for 2 days with moderate use. 

Powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 processor, theUSvariant of the ZenFone 4 Max sports a 5.5-inch display with 720 x 1280 pixels,further offering dual SIM support, fingerprint scanner, 3 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of expandable storagespace. There's a dual camera (13 MP + 5 MP wide angle) on the back of the phone,and an 8 MP camera with LED flash on the front. The new handset runs Android 7Nougat out of the box, and will be updated to Android 8 Oreo at some point.

In the US,you can buy the ZenFone 4 Max from Asus' official website - see the first sourcelink below. The handset works on GSM/LTE carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile,but it's not compatible with Verizon and Sprint. At the moment, we don't know when other smartphones fromAsus' ZenFone 4 series are going to be released in the US, but we'lllet you know when we find out. Update: Asus says the ZenFone 4 and ZenFone 4 Pro will be available in the US in the fourth quarter of the year.

sources: Asus US,Asus Canada, Asus North America (Twitter)