ASUS Zenfone 3 – Zenfone 3 Delux3 – Zenfone 3 Ultra

Earlier this year the Taiwanese Electronics major ASUS showcased their new product range at Taiwan in Jun. Revealed at the show were some new and great products in Mobile and Computing range.

All those devices were launched in India on 17th August at an event in New Delhi. Zenfone 3, Zenfone 3 Deluxe and Zenfone 3 Ultra were the mobile devices that are power packed with super cool features and others in the launch box were Zenbook 3, Transformer 3 Pro.

A detailed review of the ASUS Zenfone 3

Design

The design of the phone is something which I like the most about the phone. Asus has used glass in both front and back of the phone and it looks absolutely stunning. The back and front glasses are 2.5D glasses which means these are not only tough but also these are a bit curved from the sides. It ensures a great in-hand feel when you hold the phone. The buttons are also made of metal and this causes a good amount of feedback when they are pressed. Other than that the fingerprint scanner and camera are nicely placed in the back.

While the device looks good and also has a great feel but it is certainly not a genuine design. The phone has a lot of elements copied from the Samsung Galaxy S7. However, a good design in the Sub 30K pricing is always good for consumers. However, the built quality looks to be fine and being a 5.5-Inch phone its weight is pretty less, though. Moreover, the thickness of the device is just 7.7 mm. Again, the premium looking glass back catches smudges and fingerprints quite easily and even after having Corning Gorilla Glass 3 I’m quite sure it won’t survive a fall. So it’s always better to add a case.

Display

The Asus Zenfone 3 has a beautiful 5.5 inch AMOLED display. As in this case, Asus is using AMOLED technology it is very obvious that the colors look much more vibrant and realistic. The display is also bright enough and using it in the sunlight is not a problem. Moreover, the viewing angles are excellent on this phone.

Other than that, the resolution of the display is 1920X1080 and it sports a pixel density of 401 PPI. Again, for protection, there’s Corning Glass 3 in front also which can survive some small falls. However, the device has thick bezels which make the look bad and screen to body ratio is just 70%.

Performance

When we buy a smartphone these days, the most important aspects we look into are the specifications, design, and camera. The Zenfone 3 has good specifications and I think it’s time to check how it performs in the test. In the time period of 2 weeks, we tested the device very much extensively and below are all the results.

Zenfone 3 uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 octa-core chipset and Asus claims the device is 30% faster than Snapdragon 615. Along with Snapdragon 625, it pairs 4 GB of RAM and Adreno 506 GPU. If you ask me, Snapdragon 625 on a sub 30K device is just too much overpriced. Do note, Le 2 comes with Snapdragon 652 which is better than the Snapdragon 625 and it sells for just 11,000 rupees. Even less than half of the price of Zenfone 3. Again, there are devices like Xiaomi Mi 5, OnePlus 3 and Le Max 2 which comes with Snapdragon 820 which is the flagship processor and these devices cost less than the Zenfone 3.

With the Snapdragon 625, day to day tasks are done well and even games with low graphics can be played well. However, the scenario changes when you try a resource hungry application. The phone starts lagging and it stutters a lot. A bit heavy games like the Asphalt 8: Airborne can be played only on low settings. If you are a power user then PageSwype will recommend you to skip this phone.

The ZenUI is also not that good and the memory management is again bad. The inbuilt 64 GB memory comes with a lot of bloatware and helps in making the phone slower.

THE ZENUI

The Zenfone 3 runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with the Asus’s ZenUI 3.0 on top. It is worth noting that the ZenUI is highly customized and if you aren’t a stock Android lover you may like the ZenUI. The ZenUI is better than other Android UI’s in terms of ease-of-use and it looks good too. But the UI is heavily bloated and the RAM management is also pretty bad. So think about your needs and choose wisely.

Connectivity

When it comes to cellular call quality then we have to say that the device is excellent. The device also supports LTE. Moreover, the device also has support for both the 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi band so connecting to your high-speed Internet connection is not a problem anymore.

camera

To start with, the Zenfone 3 has a 16 Mega Pixel rear facing the camera with f/2.0 lens. There’s also 4-axis Optical Image Stabilization, Dual tone dual LED flash and support for 4K video recording. The front shooter is an 8 Mega Pixel one and it also comes with a beautification mode.

Now coming to the point one of the main reasons for picking a Zenfone 3 can be its camera. It is one of the best camera phones in the price segment right now. In good lighting conditions, the images captured by the Zenfone 3 comes out pretty good with a lot of details. The photos also have a good amount of color accuracy. Sometimes, the photos come out a little bit overexposed though that’s not a very big deal. Moreover, the camera works well in low and artificial lighting conditions too. The photos taken in low light comes with better details than most other phones in the segment and with the low light mode turned on it comes even better. It is worth noting that the default camera application in the Zenfone 3 is very feature rich.

The 4K videos taken through the camera also looks very good. Moreover, there’s slow motion and time lapse video recording options available too. The 4 axis optical image stabilization also works decently and results in unshaken images. It will be worth watching how the phone competes with recently launched Honor 8 in the ultimate camera showdown.

The 8 Mega Pixel front facing camera is also very good. As I said earlier, there’s also a beautification mode.  One thing you should note is even after turning the beautification mode off the photos comes out very smooth and good looking.

Some of the shots from the ASUS Zenfone 3

Battery backup

Another reason to buy the Zenfone 3 can be the battery life. Zenfone 3 comes with a non-removable 3000 mAh battery. It manages to get through the whole day even with heavy usage and always on Wi-Fi or LTE. With some light web browsing, using social apps for a few hours and light gaming it manages to give you around 1.5 days of battery life. One interesting thing with the device is it when the device is kept untouched it doesn’t lose even a single bit of charge which is great.

Pro’s and cons at a glance:

Pro’s

• Beautiful design with glass on both front and back.
• Good camera and support for 4K video recording.
• Great battery backup.
• AMOLED display panel which looks bright enough.
• Accurate Fingerprint scanner.

Cons

• Bad pricing by Asus India.
• Features a Hybrid Sim Slot in which either a MicroSD card or second SIM can be used.
• Navigation keys are still not backlit.
• Chances of breaking the glass back.

Conclusion

So we are at the end of the article and you have the question whether to buy it or not? The answer varies by the need of yours. Yes! If you want a decent phone for photography below 30K INR, then yes go for it. But if you also want a phone for heavy gaming and lots of app usage we recommend you skipping this one. Personally, I feel the device is overpriced at 27,999.

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