First up what do you get in that lovely crisp white box besides of course the zenone 12 Ultra well you got yourself a type-c to type-c USB cable and Asus has also bundled quite a rigid condom case in order to keep your zenphone 12 Ultra looking box fresh and that’s basically it besides the Pokey SIM PIN jobby so Bug roll adapter stuffed in there.
DESIGN
It looks basically identical to last year’s model all it’s yet another 6.78 in Titan. Al though thankfully The bezels surrounding that perfectly flat display aren too chunky so it’s not ridiculously girthy although 220 G it certainly got quite the heft it’s actually heavier than Samsung’s Fresh D Galaxy s25 Ultra one of my main issues is the zenone is incredibly slippery again every single surface there is smoother than my scalp so yeah, I have fumbled the zen2 ultra a few times I’m not sure how I haven’t dropped it already to be honest and it has only been you know about a week so, I if you’re thinking of grabbing yourself one I’d highly recommend at the very least slapping on the bundled protective case or grabbing one of the official cases like this here devil case it’s not particularly attractive but the rubbery surface at least adds a bit of grip to the phone only problem then is you can no longer use the Zen phone 12 ultra’s rather perky camera bump as a handy finger shelf if you are trying to use this thing one-handed same as last year the zenone 12 Ultra looks quite smart but it’s not exactly the most thrilling of designs at least isus isn’t trying to emulate the iPhone you haven’t got those horrendous flat edges.
It’s pleasingly and subtly curved around the back end so feels reasonably comfortable to clutch for something that’s nearly seven bloody Ines in size that frame is constructed from Aluminium once again and then around back you’ve got a matte glass finish not a massive fan of the black finish it’s pretty straightforward and not particularly thrilling but you can also grab the Zen phone 12 Ultra in Sakura white which has got a kind of Pinky Hue otherwise s green and you got victus 2 up front thankfully no scratches or Nicks or anything so far though I have only been using the zenone 12 Ultra for one week no pre-installed screen protector on there so you might want to slap one on just in case and also this Smartphone is ip68 water industrial resistant just like last year’s model not ip69 mind you so it can’t handle a hot jet like the good old Oppo fx8 pro at OnePlus 13 anyway let’s shift gear and check out
CAMERA
My typical sort of day will involve you a fair bit of camera action at least half an hour or so of gaming plenty of video streaming plenty of music streaming when the phone’s hibernating if you don’t go quite so heavy on your blow you should be able to make it through a full weekend on a single charge this thing and is the exact same recharging Tech as last year as well 65 watt wired charging sticks about 40 ish minutes plugged in in order to fully recharge that battery and you’ve also got your basic 15 W wireless charging support as well it is only CH 1.3 though nor CH 2 support. I told you that the camera Hardware was very similar to last year’s effort although that 50 meg primary shooter has changed up the sensor to Sony’s litia 700 and you will notice the infiltration of a few new AI bits as well including an AI document scanner bit of ei pattern.
If you’re trying to capture something that’s moving particularly fast and you’ve also got good old dedicated Pro modes so you can tweak the white balance the iso levels all that good stuff you got your histogram up there up top but nor sign of any raw capture sadly now Asus has slightly upgraded that 6 axis hybrid gimbal stabilization for this generation. So low light and even in shots generally come out quite sharp unless your subject moves even slightly in which case your picks will be the usual blurry bag of ass and even in perfect Stillness those packs can be surprisingly noisy at times still colors are accurately represented in natural light. And I didn’t notice any obvious oversaturation in my test picks even with quite strong contrast unlike the old zenone 11 Ultra then like last year’s Flagship.
The zenone 12 Ultra Sports two times lossless zoom using the primary shooter once you zoom in to the three times level and Beyond it swaps to that 32 megapixel telephoto shooter with Optical image stabilization and then zoom in beyond the 10 times level. And that’s when the AI sharpening takes over which is quite obvious at times especially when dealing with human subjects for instance and then last up is a 13 megapixel Ultra wide angle shooter which tends to struggle with up close subjects not very good for your macro type Shenanigans and yes of course did you even have to ask you’ve got a bunch of AI editing tools slapped on here just tap this Wii icon in the corner photo will be analyzed you’ll be able to Circle any bits that you want to get rid of got rid of more.
Now if yourself a 32 megapix selfie shooter sadly this can only capture full HD footage there’s no 4K option on here which seems like quite the emission for a flagship smartphone these days can only capture at 30 frames per second as well nor 60 frames per second option thankfully the stabilization seems fine that audio pickup once again nice and clear that’s perfectly fine for snapping pictures of your mug even in rather inclement conditions and of course you got these little portrait smarts with the adjustable bucket action etc.
UI & FEATURES
The software here on the zenphone 12 Ultra and what you’ve got here is a bit of Android 15 action with at least four years of planned security updates although I believe that isus is still only guaranteeing two OS upgrades with this thing which is still pretty meager for a flagship Smartphone when most Rivals offer at least three or four these days but, I do adore how Asus offers a clean stock version of Android on here which you can select as you’re setting up your smartphone otherwise you can go for the issue optimized version Which packs in a worthy selection of bonus bits so for example this can separate out your notifications bar and your control center with all of those toggles so setup by quite quite like although.
I would have preferred it if you could swipe left and right to get between the notifications bar and your control center which you can do on the likes of oxygen OS and those audio controls are excellent as well including the Android 15 ability to switch the audio output between your Bluetooth speakers and headphones and the actual smartphone speakers honestly it’s so good been able to swap with just a quick tap like that cuz the number of times I bugger off down to the kitchen to make myself yet another coffee leave the Bluetooth speaker on up here by accident try just you know watching a quick Tik Tok.
And of course the audio is playing up here which confuses me for the best part of 5 minutes and is USA’s video Genie feature also worth a squint especially for this background listening tool and this will keep a YouTube video for instance playing in the background when you minimize it like so red note 14 pro 5G certainly gets my Spurt of approval it’s a great way of enjoying a live stream or something like that if you just want to miniz it. And get on with some other stuff at the same time although having said that. The zenone 12 ultra’s massive display is more than spacious enough for enjoying a bit of video action up top while you’re getting on with something else in the meantime and as always Asus has chucked in some helpful gestures and shortcuts like for instance you can double tap the old power button to load up the app of your choice in this case the camera and oh yes that ASAP action is back and am I still absolutely rubbish at actually getting it to work, yes I am you w believe how many ticks that last bit took and oh yes that assap action is back is back is back oh F yeah it’s one of those actions where every time I try and pull it off it takes me about six or seven attempts.
Then once I get it once I’ve absolutely nailed it usually just call me the finger master your mom sure does but as well as that lovely stock Android Vibe you’ve also got very little crapware packed on the Zen phone 12 Ultra just the likes of Facebook and Instagram which to be fair pretty much everyone uses apart from me you do once again get that Glide X app slapped on there as well which just allows you to quickly pair up with your laptop to share files use your Zen phone as a webcam etc etc and great to see that Asus has added a bit of eim support as well which is certainly something you would expect to see on Flagship phones these days and while I had a few issues with last year’s Flagship when it came to the connectivity in general Bluetooth WiFi etc.
PERFORMANCE & GAMING
Now one of the biggest and indeed one of the only Hardware upgrades for this 2025 Flagship is The chipset that powers procedings you’ve got Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite stuffed in there. Now that’s backed in my review model by a very healthy 16 gigs of RAM so of course the everyday running of that lovely stock Android setup is super silky smooth and when it comes to gaming on the likes of w and waves and other demanding titles while the zenone 12 Ultra certainly does not falter just like other ital blowers I found that Wan waves ran on the highest graphic settings at 60 frames per second with a fluid frame rate.
I saw barely any dips whatsoever certainly no visible Jers or anything like that while I was gaming that flat display is perfectly responsive as well and the good news is you can get gaming for hours at a time no worries whatsoever the zen12 ultra only gets slightly warm doesn’t get anywhere near hot and yes all of this gaming was performed using the Game Genie high performance mode I also made liberal use of various other features including do not disturb the cold block and all that Shenanigans and while you’re gaming you can actually boost that refresh rate all the way up to 144 HZ but this only works for games that run natively at 144 HZ. There’s no kind of Posh upscaling type smarts going on here and of course one of the benefits of that Snapdragon e to lead besides the fact that it’s an absolute house for gaming is the fact that it supports all kinds of AI smart Arery and that’s certainly something that Asus is pushing hard on the zenone 12 Ultra and a lot of the AI processing happening on device so you don’t need to be online for them to work so for instance sound recorder you got the usual transcription smarts now version 2.0 with translations supporting a variety of languages if you actually use this thing to make a phone call well you got a bit of AI noise cancellation to muffle all the background Shenanigans going on.
AI features chucked on here as well including the ability to summarize any article that you’re reading in the likes of Google Chrome this only takes a couple of seconds to churn out nice and nippy and generally it’s on point coming up with all of the most Sant points that are discussed in the article and likewise you can also now get summaries of any documents that you download just long press on anything and then tap this bad boy here and again this be broken down into a small number of bullet points and then of course you got the usual Circle to Surge Gemini yada yada type stuff on here as well so overall a decent respectable AI offer. And if not quite as comprehensive as what you’ll get the likes of the new s25 series oh and also before I forget you’ve got up to 512 gigs of storage on this bad boy but that’s not expandable via MicroSD you just got space on that Sim tra for a pair of SIM cards and while it’s just your typical bug Standard Optical fingerprint sensor on here not a Swanky pants ultrasonic effort.
DISPLAY
It comes to the almighty 6.8 is inch display that’s slapped on the front end of this x phone 12 Ultra appears to be the same panel as last year’s Flagship once again a Samsung AMOLED fair with nice crispy contrast the visuals are pleasingly pin sharp got HDR 10 support on here no Dolby Vision once again although Netflix shown is absolutely bugger all HDR capabilities probably because it’s still pre-launch you can p about with the color output as usual in those display settings it set to Optimal by default got the usual NightLight type eye protection Affairs and the tech skills that refresh rate on your behalf down to the likes of 1 Hz for the always on display and up to 120 HZ.
when you want a bit more fluid animation and as I mentioned before got that 144 Hz mode for supported games and in the pre-recorded pre-briefing Asus didn’t mention expressly anything about Dion on this thing which I know is a big feature for anyone who’s sensitive to Leed screens and flickering in low light so your uncle spt’s going to have to do some probin on that one bear with me. Good news on the audio front cuz you’ve got once again a beefy pair of stereo speakers on this thing they properly blast audio right at your FAL region when you max out that volume but the audio quality stays strong you got full support for the likes of Apex adaptive a to high reses audio etc.
BATTERY
Last year Zen 4 The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra marks a significant advancement in smartphone technology, showcasing impressive improvements over its predecessor. one 11 Ultra bosted a 5,500 AMP capacity battery which is one of the biggest of any of the flagship phones out there at the time and isus is stuck with the exact same capacity for the zenphone 12 Ultra again buger all change there unfortunately no longer one of the biggest as the likes of the Oppo fx8 Pro and the OnePlus 133 pushing the 6,000 Mah sort of capacity these days but all the same no complaints whatsoever on the battery performance here and the Zen phone 12 Ultra with my sim stuffed in there at the end of a very long very intensive day. I still had roughly a third of that battery life remaining.