The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra is here with a big screen, loads of AI tools, and no US release plans - Related to flagship, warns, tools,, us, this

Steam now warns if developers abandon early access games

Steam’s early access program lets developers get games into the hands of gamers ahead of an official launch. The program has helped titles like Hades and Baldur’s Gate 3, launching them early and gaining gamers’ opinions before they are officially released. However, not every early access title is as successful as those titles; in fact, most aren’t, and some never make it out of development hell.

Now, Steam warns people when they visit an early-access game page if the developer hasn’t not long ago released an improvement in a while. Valve, the business behind Steam, hasn’t officially made the announcement, but it was pointed out by SteamDB and then corroborated by Eurogamer and PC Gamer.

Steam now warns about Early Access that have not been updated in months. 🕵️ Tip: SteamDB browser extension exhibits last improvement for all games. [image or embed] — SteamDB ([website] February 5, 2025 at 6:54 AM.

You can see this warning with games like XCavalypse, Cavern Kings, So Many Cubes and many more.

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The Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra is here with a big screen, loads of AI tools, and no US release plans

Flexible AMOLED screen with 2400 x 1080 pixel resolution and up to 144Hz refresh rate support;

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor with up to [website] CPU clock speeds and Adreno 830 GPU;

50MP primary rear-facing camera with Sony Lytia 700 sensor and updated gimbal stabilizer;

32MP telephoto camera with f/[website] aperture, 3X optical zoom, and built-in OIS;

5,500mAh battery with 65W wired and 15W wireless charging capabilities;

Ebony Black, Sakura White, and Sage Green color options.

Zenfone 12 Ultra 's overall performance compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 -powered Zenfone 11 Ultra. But that was kind of a given, especially after the with Snapdragon 8 Elite inside nearly three months ago. Okay, so the big change is basically Qualcomm's state-of-the-art new Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC, which will obviously vastly improve the's overall performance compared to the-powered Zenfone 11 Ultra. But that was kind of a given, especially after the ROG Phone 9 Pro came out with Snapdragon 8 Elite inside nearly three months ago.

Pretty much everything else is unchanged, and I do mean every... little... thing from the 50 + 32 + 13MP triple rear-facing camera system to the 5,500mAh battery capacity and charging support, the storage and memory options, and even the overall design language.

Like its undeniably gorgeous predecessor, the Asus Zenfone 12 Ultra comes with a matte glass body, "elegantly" rounded corners, and "ultra-narrow" bezels, although for what it's worth, the product weight is reduced by a few grams while the height, width, and depth are essentially unchanged.

ROG Phone 9 Pro ) aside for a second, the That's really not worth much in terms of design innovation or even refinement, but if we leave the Zenfone 11 Ultra (and) aside for a second, the Zenfone 12 Ultra's specs are objectively not bad. They're not groundbreaking, but they're largely in line with many of the best Android phones out there right now.

Do you want to guess how many times AI is mentioned in a roughly 700-word press release announcing the launch of the Zenfone 12 Ultra? 26 times. And that's not counting the 19 additional mentions in the spec sheet below the actual announcement that I intentionally left out of the list above to quickly discuss in the following lines.

It's crystal clear that Asus expects artificial intelligence to prove the key selling point of its latest Android flagship, but unfortunately for the Taiwan-based outfit, the same essentially goes for every other smartphone manufacturer in business today.

And as intriguing as some of these AI Magic Fill, AI Unblur, AI Document Scanner, AI Tracking, AI Voice Clarity, AI Portrait Video [website], AI Transcript [website], and AI Article Summary tools might sound to people unfamiliar with the mobile industry's progresses this last year or so, it's hard to find something truly unique or revolutionary in there.

Our in-depth Zenfone 12 Ultra review (which is already live) largely confirms that assumption, describing most of these AI-powered aspects as a "proof of concept" rather than fully fleshed-out components capable of revolutionizing your user experience as you used to know it and setting this particular device apart from the competition.

You know how the Zenfone 11 Ultra is not available through any US carriers, but can be purchased from its manufacturer's regional website starting at $[website] (or a lot less if you know when to look)?

That's apparently not going to be the case for the Zenfone 12 Ultra, which is definitely sad but not entirely shocking. In Europe, the ultra-high-end handset is priced at €1,099 in an entry-level configuration, which equates to nearly $1,150. Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean the Zenfone 12 Ultra would have started at over $1,100 or even $1,000 stateside, but hypotheticals like that no longer matter very much.

What matters instead is that Asus is leaving the door open for "future Zenfone models" to be made available in the US, so perhaps we'll see a redesigned and substantially improved Zenfone 13 Ultra released around those parts next year. Let a boy dream, will you?

If you held out hope that Asus would reconsider its decision to go from a rare compact Zenfone 10 flagship to a trend-following Zenfone 11 Ultra giant last year, the Zenfone 12 Ultra will likely greatly disappoint you with its massive [website] display.

Steam’s early access program lets developers get games into the hands of gamers ahead of an official launch. The program has helped titles like Hades ......

This upcoming Ultra flagship could make the ultrawide 1x, and the main camera 1.5x

The phone will apparently have a 35mm main camera and shoot 1x photos via the ultrawide lens.

The phone is noted to have similar sensors for the main and ultrawide cameras.

We’ve seen some interesting smartphone camera hardware in the last few years, such as high-resolution periscope cameras, one-inch main sensors, and true variable aperture cameras. Now, it looks like an upcoming flagship Android phone could introduce an intriguing hardware trend.

Weibo tipster Digital Chat Station -deleted post outlining the camera hardware for the rumored vivo X200 Ultra. The leaker asserts that the phone will ship with a 50MP 1/[website] main camera, a 50MP 1/[website] ultrawide camera, and a 200MP periscope camera (1/[website].

The tipster reiterates that the main camera will have a 35mm focal length, equivalent to roughly [website] on other smartphones. By contrast, most other phones have a 24mm focal length for a wider field of view. This will be music to the ears of photography enthusiasts as 35mm (or even narrower) is considered the default focal length on DSLR cameras.

Do you think the 1x camera is too wide on your phone? 67 votes Yes, my main camera should be narrower 57 % No, I'm happy with the current field of view 31 % I'm not sure 12 %.

What’s particularly interesting is that the ultrawide camera will apparently have the same sensor size as the main camera. That’s likely because the leaker implies the ultrawide angle camera will take 1x (or 24mm) photos. It’s unclear if these snaps will be cropped from the ultrawide sensor or if the camera will actually have a 24mm focal length. Nevertheless, the fact that the main and ultrawide cameras could share the same sensor size bodes well for image consistency.

This wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen a smartphone with a 35mm ([website] primary camera, as ZTE and Nubia both offer phones with this hardware. We’ve also seen devices like the iPhone 16 series, the vivo X200 Pro, and the Xiaomi 14 series letting you shoot at a cropped 35mm focal length by default. However, an ultrawide camera that actually takes 24mm (~1x) shots would be an interesting move. So the combination of a 35mm primary camera and an ultrawide camera shooting at 1x would be a major change in the way we think about smartphone camera zoom levels.

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Flexible AMOLED screen with 2400 x 1080 pixel resolution and up to 144Hz refresh rate support;

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