ASUS Zenfone 2 Review: It Has A Lot Going For It
ASUS India launched the ASUS Zenfone 2 smartphone in the last week of April in India. I got my hands on the Zenfone 2 ZE551ML model featuring 4 GB RAM and 32 GB internal storage. Even though it is pretty evident from the specs that the phone packs a punch for the attractive price it is offered at, after using it for while I have to admit that it has a lot going 'right' for it. The phone has a lot of potential to make its mark and while I write this review do note that the phone is already up for sale in India. Following the trend from the first-gen Zenfone series, the company has again chosen Flipkart in an exclusive tie-up for selling the ZenFone 2 series.
The smartphone comes in these variants:
Zenfone 2 (ZE550ML) - 2GB RAM and 16GB variant priced at Rs. 14,999.
Zenfone 2 (ZE551ML) - 4GB RAM and 32/64 GB variants priced at Rs. 22,999 & Rs. 19,999.
What's Hot?
1. A really affordable price for these specs is the biggest strong point for Zenfone 2.
2. A fast-charging 3000 mAh battery that will go from 0 to 60% is little more than half an hour.
3. One of the few Android smartphones having 4 GB RAM.
4. The bright FHD screen which shows great picture quality.
5. Great performance (64 bit CPU) while running intensive apps.
What's Not?
1. Poor camera quality in low-light conditions.
2. Weak speaker volume. Does not turn loud enough to be audible to a group of people.
3. Battery drains too fast.
4. The display even in bright mode is not visible outdoors.
Without further adieu, let's dive straight into the various aspects of the phone to see what's hot and what's not.
Asus Zenfone 2 Box
The Zenfone 2 comes in a compact white-grey coloured packaging and packs the device alongside an USB Charger, a User Guide and a Warranty Card. The first impression on opening the box was that the phone looks pretty big for a 5.5 inch display and definitely does not look cheap. On the top of the screen, there are 3 capacitive button that aren't illuminated. The phone is pretty sleek to hold and light on the pocket.
The Design, Look And Feel -
The build quality of the smartphone is super fine. When you hold the phone you can sense that it is designed to appear bold and sleek. It's the back panel of the phone that people may have issues with (in that though it's preference-based, some may say that the panel looks non-rich.) What Asus calls the concentric circle design is what we see in the textured format upon the plastic plate brushed with aluminium. If looks don't bother you, do note that the texture gives the phone a comfortable, firm grip.
On the rear panel, the most interesting thing are the volume rocker buttons located at the center just above the ASUS logo. They come with a slightly ridged texture and you will find yourself using it quite often. I found them easy to find by feel while listening to my playlist. Located at the usual place is the 13 megapixel camera and a Dual LED flash sensor right above it.
At the bottom of the rear panel is a quite large speaker grill and though it may give you the impression that this phone has quite a large sound, we found the reality to be otherwise. More on that later.
Coming to the buttons - the only button to be weirdly placed on the phone is the power ON/OFF one. It sits on the top of the phone and doesn't work with a soft press. It is a relief that certain tap commands on the display bring the Zenfone 2 to life or let it go to sleep. So, you may end up not using the power button that much anyway. Besides the power button is the 3.5 mm audio jack for plugging in your headphones. On the opposite end of the phone, there's the micro USB port for either transferring files back to your machine or charging the device.
There are no ports on either of the sides of the phone and from this angle with 10.9 mm height, the phone looks quite slim. In fact, ASUS boasts of its ultra thin 3.9 mm edges. Full marks to that. The ergonomic arc of the phone designed for better grip is quite comfortable too. The phone is slightly curved on the sides and it doesn't do much than enhancing the looks. The good part is that the back panel or the sides do not get any fingerprints.
Talking of the back panel, the phone which comes in these options - Black, Red, Gold and Silver. I received a grey (silver) model, but I am guessing that the interesting pattern on the rear end must be looking cooler in the red or white options. The panel is removable and so I took it apart. You might think that since the panel is removable, the battery would be too. However, the Zenfone 2's battery is sealed and non removable. Inside there are two SIM card slots (Micro-SIM, Dual stand-by) and a microSD card slot (64GB).
Zenfone 2 Display
In the age and time where Quad HD is fast becoming popular, FHD might not seem like a lot, but with the right mix of brightness and saturation, this display is really vivid. Interestingly, there are 3 different modes in which you can operate the Zenfone 2 - The Balance Mode, The Vivid Mode and The Reading Mode. In vivid mode, the colors turn out to be really bright, whereas the reading mode is very easy on the eyes and perfect for reading an ebook on the go.
The not-so-good part is that the display is hardly visible in direct sunlight even in the bright vivid mode. To be honest, this is a big turn off considering that a lot of customers will be looking forward to use the Zenfone outdoors.
Zenfone 2 Processor And Memory -
Running on a Intel Atom Quad Core Z3580 (2.3GHz) 64-Bit processor coupled with PowerVR G6430 with OpenGL 3.0 support, the ASUS Zenfone 2 specs may not look worthy of competition with other Octa Core Android phones that fall in the same or lesser price range, but rest assured that performance wise the Zenfone 2 does not disappoint at all. In fact, its overall responsiveness and fluid experience while running high-demanding apps was something that left me impressed. I ran a couple of a high-graphic games and played them for two minutes before switching to the other and found that there were no jerks and the games ran really smoothly. Multitasking has been taken care of very well with the Intel Atom processor.
On the memory front, I think it isn't too much to say that anyone will be excited to use the world’s first smartphone to ship with a 64-bit processor and 4 GB of RAM. On the internal storage front too, depending on the model you are using, you get 16GB/32GB/64GB eMMC Flash memory. On any of these models, you also have 5GB free lifetime subscription of ASUS WebStorage, which is quite something. Any average user will find this smartphone's storage to be sufficient even to run memory-intensive applications.
The smartphone comes in these variants:
Zenfone 2 (ZE550ML) - 2GB RAM and 16GB variant priced at Rs. 14,999.
Zenfone 2 (ZE551ML) - 4GB RAM and 32/64 GB variants priced at Rs. 22,999 & Rs. 19,999.
What's Hot?
1. A really affordable price for these specs is the biggest strong point for Zenfone 2.
2. A fast-charging 3000 mAh battery that will go from 0 to 60% is little more than half an hour.
3. One of the few Android smartphones having 4 GB RAM.
4. The bright FHD screen which shows great picture quality.
5. Great performance (64 bit CPU) while running intensive apps.
What's Not?
1. Poor camera quality in low-light conditions.
2. Weak speaker volume. Does not turn loud enough to be audible to a group of people.
3. Battery drains too fast.
4. The display even in bright mode is not visible outdoors.
Without further adieu, let's dive straight into the various aspects of the phone to see what's hot and what's not.
Asus Zenfone 2 Box
The Zenfone 2 comes in a compact white-grey coloured packaging and packs the device alongside an USB Charger, a User Guide and a Warranty Card. The first impression on opening the box was that the phone looks pretty big for a 5.5 inch display and definitely does not look cheap. On the top of the screen, there are 3 capacitive button that aren't illuminated. The phone is pretty sleek to hold and light on the pocket.
The Design, Look And Feel -
The build quality of the smartphone is super fine. When you hold the phone you can sense that it is designed to appear bold and sleek. It's the back panel of the phone that people may have issues with (in that though it's preference-based, some may say that the panel looks non-rich.) What Asus calls the concentric circle design is what we see in the textured format upon the plastic plate brushed with aluminium. If looks don't bother you, do note that the texture gives the phone a comfortable, firm grip.
On the rear panel, the most interesting thing are the volume rocker buttons located at the center just above the ASUS logo. They come with a slightly ridged texture and you will find yourself using it quite often. I found them easy to find by feel while listening to my playlist. Located at the usual place is the 13 megapixel camera and a Dual LED flash sensor right above it.
At the bottom of the rear panel is a quite large speaker grill and though it may give you the impression that this phone has quite a large sound, we found the reality to be otherwise. More on that later.
Coming to the buttons - the only button to be weirdly placed on the phone is the power ON/OFF one. It sits on the top of the phone and doesn't work with a soft press. It is a relief that certain tap commands on the display bring the Zenfone 2 to life or let it go to sleep. So, you may end up not using the power button that much anyway. Besides the power button is the 3.5 mm audio jack for plugging in your headphones. On the opposite end of the phone, there's the micro USB port for either transferring files back to your machine or charging the device.
Talking of the back panel, the phone which comes in these options - Black, Red, Gold and Silver. I received a grey (silver) model, but I am guessing that the interesting pattern on the rear end must be looking cooler in the red or white options. The panel is removable and so I took it apart. You might think that since the panel is removable, the battery would be too. However, the Zenfone 2's battery is sealed and non removable. Inside there are two SIM card slots (Micro-SIM, Dual stand-by) and a microSD card slot (64GB).
Zenfone 2 Display
ZenFone 2 is a 5.5-inch smartphone. It has a very small bezel width and when you use it for an extended period of time, you start sensing that it actually feels like a 5 inch smartphone. The reason behind this is the 72% screen-to-body ratio. The IPS capacitive touch screen well protected with Corning Gorilla Glass 3, has a FHD resolution (1920 x 1080 pixel) display with a gigantic 403 ppi pixel density. The glass comes with anti-fingerprint coating which is great and keeps your Zenfone smudge free and removes friction by upto 30%.
In the age and time where Quad HD is fast becoming popular, FHD might not seem like a lot, but with the right mix of brightness and saturation, this display is really vivid. Interestingly, there are 3 different modes in which you can operate the Zenfone 2 - The Balance Mode, The Vivid Mode and The Reading Mode. In vivid mode, the colors turn out to be really bright, whereas the reading mode is very easy on the eyes and perfect for reading an ebook on the go.
The not-so-good part is that the display is hardly visible in direct sunlight even in the bright vivid mode. To be honest, this is a big turn off considering that a lot of customers will be looking forward to use the Zenfone outdoors.
Zenfone 2 Processor And Memory -
Running on a Intel Atom Quad Core Z3580 (2.3GHz) 64-Bit processor coupled with PowerVR G6430 with OpenGL 3.0 support, the ASUS Zenfone 2 specs may not look worthy of competition with other Octa Core Android phones that fall in the same or lesser price range, but rest assured that performance wise the Zenfone 2 does not disappoint at all. In fact, its overall responsiveness and fluid experience while running high-demanding apps was something that left me impressed. I ran a couple of a high-graphic games and played them for two minutes before switching to the other and found that there were no jerks and the games ran really smoothly. Multitasking has been taken care of very well with the Intel Atom processor.
On the memory front, I think it isn't too much to say that anyone will be excited to use the world’s first smartphone to ship with a 64-bit processor and 4 GB of RAM. On the internal storage front too, depending on the model you are using, you get 16GB/32GB/64GB eMMC Flash memory. On any of these models, you also have 5GB free lifetime subscription of ASUS WebStorage, which is quite something. Any average user will find this smartphone's storage to be sufficient even to run memory-intensive applications.
Replies
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Ankita KatdareAntutu Benchmark Test
Running the Antutu app on Zenfone 2 placed it below Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and OnePlus One. A recent report published by Antutu showed that in the first quarter of 2015 some of the top performing phones were Samsung S5, S6, Note 4, HTC One M9, Google Nexu 6, OnePlus as well as Moto Droid Turbo. Though the Zenfone 2 is not in the top list, it is clear that its performance is better than many other phones in its league.
Asus Zenfone 2 Software and UI
The Asus Zenfone 2 comes with Lollipop out of the box layered with Zen UI. Be aware this is not the latest version 5.1 or even 5.0.2, but it's the original Android 5.0 Lollipop without an update. Though there's not much word about it around, but Zenfone 2 might get upgraded to the latest version soon enough. Among the various skins for UI out there, the Zen UI is probably one of the best. It is clean and intuitive and with Zenfone 2 it also retains some of the good elements from Google's Material Design. One has got to love Zen UI. It's simple and has a bundle of good useful features, one of them being the ability to customize it. The phone comes with a built-in theme engine that lets the user vary the look according to their choice, right from the icons to the color shades. I love the default keyboard on Zenfone 2. It is really easy to type on those perfectly distanced keys.
The basic Zen UI icons and the notification panel is user-friendly and there's a bunch of options that users might love. I like how the Asus ZenMotion feature can be used to wake up the phone with a simple double tap on the screen or drawing a half circle clockwise can turn on the camera app directly. That's pretty handy. There is also an option of creating multiple profiles to access your phone so that you can keep your work-mode phone different from the personal-use phone. Last but not the least, there's an interesting option called "One handed mode" that shrinks the UI to a smaller size that can be adjusted by dragging. Take a look -
A thing to notice when you first boot-up the Zenfone 2 smartphone is that it comes with a ton of built-in apps. There's an app for almost every basic need already sitting on your phone, be it taking notes, checking weather or storing on the web. App called file manager, downloads, data transfer, remote link, splendid etc are super useful and will come in handy. Special mention goes to the Kids Mode app to turn the phone into kid-friendly mode with features such as password protected internet access and the AudioWizard app that lets you switch between audio modes: speech, game, movie etc.
Asus Zenfone 2 Battery Life
As mentioned earlier, Zenfone 2's battery is non-removable. The 3000 mAh lithium-polymer power pack with fast-charge technology may feel enough given the fact that the Intel Atom processor doesn't require much. However, in my experience, the Zenfone 2 suffers from a battery brain issue. We are not sure if it's the Lollipop OS (older version) that is responsible for battery losses or there's something else wrong. But, it is great that Asus has acknowledged the issue and is soon releasing an update to resolve it. Moreover, the good part is that the fast-charging tech is a real life-saver. I charged the battery from 5% to 95% in just 50 minutes! A dead battery can be bought to 60% in little more than 30 minutes. There's also three different modes for smart battery saving, namely - Ultra-saving, Optimized and Customized. In Ultra-Saving mode, Zenfone 2 at can last for 2-3 days on complete charge.
ASUS Zenfone 2 Camera
The rear camera on the smartphone has a 13 megapixel sensor (with dual tone LED flash), while the front cam is a 5 megapixel snapper. The long-existing problem with smartphone cameras is that they perform the best only in good lighting conditions. In low-light mode, these cameras return foul photos. Asus Zenfone 2's snapper is no different. It has a f/2.0 aperture offering a good depth of field, however in the photos I captured, the highlights weren't clearly visible. The best thing about this camera is the HDR mode, using which I could capture fairly better photos outdoors. Speaking of modes, the camera app on the phone comes with a plethora of modes to suit various settings. For instance, there's Super resolution mode, Panorama mode, Selfie mode etc. to choose from. If you are wondering about the videos you will be capturing via the Zenfone 2 cam, well it supports 1080 pixel HD resolution videos captured @ 30 fps.
It is the front camera that is really impressive on the Zenfone 2. With its wide angle lens, the 5 megapixel snapper is really good for capturing group selfies and the on-board beautification feature as well as panorama mode will help you fit a group of 10 heads in one picture easily. -
Ankita KatdareAsus Zenfone 2 Camera Sample Shots
Check out the photos captured outdoors in bright light. The depth of field is quite good.
In some of the shots, the detailed became blurred even in HDR mode.
[Click on the thumbnails to enlarge]
The mug has been captured at night. It was funny to see that in night mode, the true colors got altered with the flash and a photo in plain mode looked better. In the origami flowers above, you can note that the HDR mode makes everything a lot better, especially when enough light is coming in. The one taken in basic mode outdoors at night is a poor result.
Asus Zenfone 2 Audio Quality & Connectivity
The speaker grid located at the bottom rear end of the phone isn't impressive. The sound quality is adequate and gives a good performance through earphones. However, it does not get louder after a certain limit and if a group inside a room wants to listen to music, chances are that half of them won't be able to hear the music being played. A single speaker system on many other phones offer much louder sound.
The connectivity front is taken care of with support for Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, Hotspot, Bluetooth v4.0, GPS / A-GPS, GLONASS, NFC and yes, FM-Radio too.
Final Verdict about Asus Zenfone 2 -
Anyone looking for a smartphone that offers really fast processing speed, great touch screen responsiveness, loves Zen UI and are willing to compromise a little on the battery will find Zenfone 2 to be a great buy. -
Harshad ItaliyaVery detailed review !
I loved the camera result. It's just intel processor that was holding me but now looking forward to see Asus Zenfone 2 as my Moto G replacement.
👍 Superb #-Link-Snipped-# -
Kaustubh Katdare
I'd say you should hold on till OnePlus 2 is released. Or if you want a replacement right now; go with OnePlus One without thinking twice. ASUS does have a good phone; but the low-light performance is disappointing.Harshad ItaliyaI loved the camera result. It's just intel processor that was holding me but now looking forward to see Asus Zenfone 2 as my Moto G replacement.
I guess you've had bad experience with Xiaomi. Else the Mi4i is a great option too. -
Harshad Italiya
Well, not that much but I have tried Lenovo A7000 and that is really impressive within the price range upto 9-10KKaustubh KatdareI guess you've had bad experience with Xiaomi. Else the Mi4i is a great option too. -
Ankita Katdare#-Link-Snipped-# Thanks! 👍 Do let me know what exactly do you want to read about OTG support. Will update the review with it. Also do share any questions you may have about the features.
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Satya Swaroop DashThe firepower is great but how often are we going to use it, that's the important question here . Colours on the photos are a little lackluster. What is the situation regarding the video camera ?
PS: This has to be the most detailed review of the ASUS Zenfone 2 on the internet. 👍 -
Shreyas Sule#-Link-Snipped-# : Very well written and detailed review!
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Ankita Katdare#-Link-Snipped-# I agree. The photo quality isn't as fine as is expected from the camera. If we compare those shots with other phones in similar category from Samsung & Nokia, these do fall short by a large margin.
However, do consider the fact that the photos you are seeing here (although unedited) are reduced to a smaller size so that they load fast on the page.
As far as the video is concerned, I did capture two indoors and outdoors and have to again admit that it won't impress you.
This video is close to the results I got -
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Ankita Katdare#-Link-Snipped-# Thank you for reading. 👍
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Ankita KatdareThe company recently reached out to say that the Lollipop update for the ASUS Zenfone Series First Generation (4, 5 and 6 inch) is expected sooner than the anticipations.
It is in final testing stage and should arrive soon. -
Ankita KatdareIf anyone has any questions about the smartphone, feel free to ask in comments below.
Will be glad to test and reply. 👍
You are reading an archived discussion.
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