In today’s
era of smart phones when every day there is a new company in market with
cheaper phones, with various features in it. These new company sustain in
market for short span of time and then vanish. The smart phone wars seem to
have no end in sight. This battle is on the rise by the day and one of the
latest entrants to this battle is the Zenfone2 by ASUS. The Taiwan base
manufacturing company which was nowhere in the smart phone market till last
year is making waves for its recent smart phone i.e. the Zenfone2. The Zenfone2
is currently one of the highest performing devices in the market as it packs
one of the most highest performing processors in it’s range and it also comes
with 4 GB of RAM in the top model. Some of the notable enhancements include the
Super resolution picture taken by the camera, the ability to change themes and
layout options in the ZenUI and the overall build of the phone. We will talk in
detail about this phone as we continue our ASUS Zenfone2 review and do a
detailed breakdown for you so that you can find out whether it’s the right
device for you or not.
ASUS
Zenfone2 specifications:
The
specifications that we have given over here are for the top end model i.e.
ZE551-ML, we will also discuss about the cheaper models in subsequent
paragraphs.
Display
|
1920×1080 pixels, 5.5 inch IPS display, 403
ppi (70.1% body to screen ratio) with Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protection
|
Software
|
Android 5.0 Lollipop with ASUS ZenUI on top
|
Chipset
|
Intel Atom Z3580
|
CPU
|
2.3 GHz Quad core processor
|
RAM
|
4 GB
|
GPU
|
PowerVRG6430
|
Storage
|
16/32/64/128 GB internal and expandable upto
64 GB with microSD
|
Camera
|
13 MP primary and 5 MP secondary with Pixel
Master Camera enhancements, dual tone, dual LED flash with support upto 1080p
video at 30fps
|
Battery
|
3000 mAh (Li-Po non removable battery), fast
charging (up to 60% in 40 mins)
|
Cellular connectivity
|
Dual Sim with dual stand by and dual call
support (micro SIM supported), 4g LTE supported
|
Other Connectivity options
|
Bluetooth v4.0, Wi-fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac , NFC
enabled, FM radio as well as GPS. micro USB connectivity
|
Sensors
|
Gyro sensor, Accelerometer, Proximity, Compass
|
Weight
|
170 grams
|
Colors
|
Ceramic White, Sheer Gold, Glacier Gray, Osmium
Black, Glamour Red
|
Now let us just head into a detailed overview of every
feature and specification in order to know more about the phone.
ASUS
Zenfone2: Build & Design
The build of
the Zenfone feels premium though the back is actually plastic with a faux
metallic finish to give it a more premium feel. The front of the phone is good
enough, but the 5.5 inch form factor is not handy enough for one hand use as
the phone feels a bit large in the hand. The phone has 3.9 mm edges and is
pretty slim. It has concentric circle designs on both the front soft keys
section and on the rear volume rocker. A 72% screen to body ratio means that on
paper this phone has a really great design and less bezel but in practical real
world usage we found that the phone was somewhat big.
The overall
build is pretty solid and the battery is a non removable one, with slots for
sim cards as well as MicroSD card visible as soon as you open up the back
cover. The body has undergone a minor change as the volume buttons are now
beneath the camera and not on the sides of the body. There are no buttons on
the sides and that might be a welcome change for few users and be despised by
some. As you can see in the above image the speaker grill is on the lower side
of the back and the sound gets muffled when you place the phone by it’s back or
when you have the phone in the hand, so that’s one con for the phone.
ASUS
Zenfone2: Display
The phone
has a 5.5 inch display keeping in line with the current trend of large screen
flagship phones. The 4 GB RAM variant has a full HD display while the 2 GB RAM
variant has a 720p HD display. The colors are vivid and saturation is good on
the phone. While one of the issues was that even the maximum brightness of the
display didn’t feel much bright in the sunlight. Corning Gorilla Glass 3
protection is present for the phone and the display is impressive though
not as good as the few latest smart phones. The touch has a really good
response time of 60 ms and every touch is registered really quickly. The double
tap to wake up and other gesture controls too perform really good on the
device.
ASUS
Zenfone2: Performance
The phone
packs a really powerful hardware combination and is among the first smart
phones to have a 4 GB RAM onboard. The 2.3 GHz quad core processor is able to
handle a lot of tasks with ease. The phone was able to play a heavy 4k HD video
without any lag or any frame drops, this is something which even high
performance phones fail to do without frame rate drops in our tests. Apart from
that the phone scored around 42,208 on the Antutu Benchmark in our test. 21,850
on the Quadrant Standard and 59.7 fps on Nenamark. In terms of practical usage
almost all of your apps would run smoothly and multi tasking is a breeze on
this device. But everything is not all glitters. Many applications haven’t been
coded well to run on Intel’s chipset and even some popular applications like
Instagram etc. have problems and minor glitches. So these are some issues that
ASUS needs to sort out by working in conjunction with the app developers or by
pushing out software updates for the same. Apart from these the phone makes a
really good impression on the performance front.
ASUS Zenfone2: Camera
ASUS has
hyped the camera quality of the Zenfone2 a lot and even compared it with DSLR
like clarity. Though there’s not much truth in it but still the camera on the
Zenfone2 is capable of some pretty decent shots. Low light photography, Super
resolution mode ( 51 Mega pixel photos) and HDR along with dual tone flash make
for a pretty interesting package. Even the front 5 MP camera doles out some
pretty decent pictures and is good for clicking selifes as it has
beautification feature turned on by default. Here are some of the pictures we
took with the Zenfone2 camera; none of them has been modified/edited or even
compressed.
Some of the pictures clicked in different lighting & angles.
5.1 MP Camera- Zenfone2
ASUS Zenfone2: Battery & Usage
The phone comes with various internal storage options ranging from
16 GB all the way upto 128 GB for the top end model. Apart from that
you can always expand the storage via microSD card upto an additional 64 GB
more.
The battery life of the phone is between excellent and mediocre.
You can’t call the battery backup as excellent as the device tends to eat up
battery by 1-2% every hour even when doing nothing. The phone lasts up to 7-8
pm at night if you start the day at 6 AM with 100% battery. The 3000 mAh
battery is good but for a phone with a high res display it barely manages to
last you through the day. But for low to medium usage users it should be fine
as the phone lasts upto 1 day plus on mild to low usage patterns.
Call quality was good but
the earpiece was not sufficiently loud enough and it can be a problem when you
are in extremely noisy environments or at a discotheque/bar at night.
Overall-
Review
The ZE551 ML variant of the Zenfone2 is a sweet value for money phone
which does a lot and justifies its price tag of 19,999. The 2GB variant of the
same phone priced at 14,999 is equally good though less powerful. The ZE550 ML
priced at 12,999 is a slightly weaker proposition and the Xiaomi MI 4i might
feel better at that price point but if expandable storage and a good camera is
what you need then Zenfone2 ftw.
This phone is currently the best you can get under 20K INR and ASUS has
managed to give the competition a run for their money, at least on paper. We
will see as to how long this reign lasts.
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