It has been a rocky road, this ZenFone 6 release. ASUS has managed to keep customers in the dark regarding shipping dates, release dates, and any other information that might help customers. It would appear the strategy of saying nothing trumps giving people bad news. If you knew the truth would you walk away without buying a ZenFone 6? That is a question ASUS cannot answer because they never disclosed dates in any meaningful way when it comes to retail availability. That said, we have a new date for you all.
How does October 2 grab you? If you live in the US, that appears to be the most solid information right now. And it’s hot off the presses. We haven’t seen a hard date listed anywhere for weeks now, so this Oct 2 date is something to sink your teeth into. That would be a shipping date, so if you’re going to pre-order, now is certainly the time to make that decision so that hopefully your unit will ship out on Oct 2. It’s noteworthy that the hard-to-find Twilight Silver model is also listed as being available on Oct 2.
Click here to see our full US/Canada pre-order and buying guide with dates, models and prices.
We did hear rumors about early October a number of days ago. It didn’t see fathomable, but now that the date has been published it’s a lot more real than we previously thought. It’s also worth considering that the one US retailer selling the North American variant of the ZenFone 6 got tired of fielding customer questions and decided it was best to put up a date just to appease the inquiring customers.
We hope that Oct 2 is a worst case scenario. We are tracking various sources to see if pre-orders from weeks ago may be shipping out prior to this published date.
Regarding this date and how it may affect Canada? It’s unclear. We’ve seen the Canada date being pushed back every three to four days during September. Maybe Canada is getting units before Oct 2, but certainly we can’t say one way or the other unfortunately.
So are you happy or angry about this Oct 2 date? Do you feel it would have been better to know this date earlier? If you knew the date was distant would it have affected your decision to buy or wait or simply go with a different phone all together? Let’s discuss in the comment section!
Our personal view, based on all the feedback we received, it would have been more respectful just to give people the bad news rather than keeping people in the dark. Full disclosure on delays, ETA, may have lost some sales, but given no other 5,000mAh phones with headphone jack and no notch are on the market, ASUS should not fear a mass exodus. To us, we wish this was handled differently.
