The first modern smartphones had displays measuring less than four inches. The market has demanded more and more screen real estate, pushing most phones beyond five and six inches to become what we might have considered tablets in years past. There are still a few OEMs catering to the small phone crowd, principally among them Asus. This OEM has been releasing compact flagship phones for the last few cycles, and the upcoming Zenfone 10 just leaked looking like another little phone with big specs.

Asus has not fully revealed the Zenfone 10, but images and basic specs have been leaked to WinFuture. The big news is the small OLED screen, which according to the leak, measures just 5.9 inches diagonal. That’s big compared to those original touchscreen smartphones, but it’s positively tiny compared to devices like the Pixel 7 Pro (6.7 inches), Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (6.8 inches), and Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max (6.7 inches).

The current trend of taller aspect ratios (eg. 21:9 instead of 16:9) also means the 5.9-inch Zenfone is probably going to be very easy to use one-handed. Last year’s Zenfone 9 has the same screen size and a similar design. It was only 68.1mm wide, which is even narrower than Samsung’s smallest Galaxy S23 or the Google Pixel 7.

Asus will reportedly continue its quest to deliver high-end hardware in a compact body. The Zenfone 10 will have a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip, along with 16GB of RAM and either 256 or 512GB of storage. The rumor also points to a respectable 5,000mAh battery, which is the same size as the battery in Samsung’s much larger S23 Ultra.

Zenfone 10 top edge

There must not be a lot of internal space left with all that battery because the camera modules stick out quite a bit on the back. There’s a middling 8MP ultrawide similar to the one used last year, but the primary steps up to a 200MP Samsung sensor, presumably the same one seen in the S23 Ultra. The selfie camera, still in a left-justified hole punch, remains 32MP. Asus did, however, find room for a headphone jack.

We don’t know anything about the software, but at this juncture, it’s almost certainly running Android 13. Asus has pre-announced the Zenfone 10, giving us two other important pieces of info. First, it’s only going to cost $749, which is competitive with other budget flagships like the Pixels and OnePlus phones. Asus has also confirmed that the full Zenfone announcement will happen on June 29.