Update (Jan 31): Asus has released a teaser on social media with Zenfone branding, which further confirms that the company is indeed planning to announce the Zenfone 5-series at MWC 2018. Asus has also revealed that the event will be streamed live and you can check it out on the company website.

Earlier (Jan 30): Joining the growing list of smartphone makers expected to unveil new phones at the next month’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), Taiwanese manufacturer Asus has sent out invites for a press event during the trade fair.

As per the invite, the company will be hosting the event on February 27 at 1930 hrs CET (0000 hrs IST). Although the invites does not state anything specific about what will be announced at the event, the presence of number 5 indicates the possible unveiling of the Zenfone 5-series. The ‘back to 5’ slogan seems like a clever reference to Asus Zenfone 5, one of first Asus-branded smartphones, which was released in 2014.  The original Zenfone 5 was very popular and a great affordable smartphone. 

The invite also carries Qualcomm Snapdragon logo, which means the phones being revealed at the event will be using the Snapdragon processors.

Given that Asus had launched the Zenfone 4 lineup just over five months ago, it seems a little early to announce a successor. However, the company CEO Jerry Shen himself had confirmed in September last year that Asus plans to launch Zenfone 5 series in March, 2018. So, a February 27 announcement makes perfect sense.

It is unclear though if the company will announce the entire Zenfone 5 lineup or they will introduce a couple of phones from the series, with others being unveiled on a later date.

At least two of the upcoming Asus Zenfone 5-series phones have already been leaked online – Zenfone 5 Max and Zenfone 5 Lite (not to be confused with the 2014 phone). We can expect these two to make their debut during the Asus press event.

Not many details about the Zenfone 5 Max and 5 Lite are known at this point, but we do know that both phones will run on Android 8.0 Oreo operating system. Also, given the trend, it is not far-fetched to imagine that these phones will include 18:9 aspect ratio screens.

As always, I will bring you guys all the details on February 27.