Report claims that Asus ZenFone 5 Max has recieved certification from the Wi-Fi Alliance; likely to launch soon

Asus has not revealed any information about the next generation of its **ZenFone series** , likely to be ZenFone 5. However, with Mobile World Congress (MWC) approaching, rumours have started flying on the internet about when the ZenFone 5 lineup will launch. [caption id=“attachment_4184817” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Asus ZenFone 4 Pro. Representational image.[/caption] According to a recent report by GizmoChina, the Wi-Fi Alliance has certified a mysterious Asus smartphone with the model number ASUS_X00QD. The report claims that this device is likely to launch as the ZenFone 5 Max in the market. The device is reported to run Android 8.0 Oreo out of the box along with support for Wi-Fi 802.11 ac. The timeline of the certification approval is in line with the plans by Asus to unveil the line-up in March 2018. The report also speculates that the device is likely to be an upper mid-range device. The company has not revealed any timeline for the launch of the lineup as pointed previously. This comes weeks after ZenFone 5 Lite, a mid-range smartphone by Asus that was certified in Russia. The **ZenFone 4 lineup** is not the only thing that Asus is focusing on. As reported previously, the company launched its **ZenFone Max Plus (M1)** late last year in Russia. M1 packed a MediaTek 6750T SoC with eight Cortex A53 cores built using older 28-nm manufacturing process which was earlier used in the Zenfone 3s Max. The device launched in two variants with the first one packing 2 GB of RAM with 16 GB of onboard storage and the second one packing 3 GB RAM along with 32 GB of storage.