Asus Zenfone 3 – Review

Asus is a company that is always motivated and charged up to bring the best of capacity in any of their product. Asus Zenfone series has witnessed continual improvement in all departments. Never did Asus get complacent or loose steam. Since the first Zenfone, the evolution of this lineup has been phenomenal. This year, we have the 3rd generation of Zenfone mobiles and among them, I have the Zenfone 3 with me. Let’s check out the review of the Asus Zenfone 3.

Design

The Asus Zenfone 3 has glass body with glass covering the front and back and framed by metal. It is a 5.5 inch device and there is also a 5.2 inch variant available. The 16 Mp camera at the rear gets a huge bump and it is flanked by laser focus sensor and dual tone LED flash. It also has a RGB color sensor for measuring the color temperature. The fingerprint sensor is just below the camera. The speaker grill is on the bottom along with USB-C port and mic. The battery is sealed in the body and is not user replaceable. The top has the 3.5 mm jack and noise cancelling mic. The mechanical buttons are all lined up on the right and the hybrid SIM tray is on the left. The 8 MP camera is on the front and the navigation keys are not back-lit.

The construction is of superior quality. The choice material used is however questionable. Though glass body gives an aesthetic appeal, we have seen mobiles in the past that have catastrophically failed because of glass body design. It is slippery to use and if broken, getting them repaired is a costly affair. The Zenfone 3 is no different. It is slippery and it definitely needs a case for protection. A case will hide the mobile’s style factor and ultimately beats the purpose. Apart from the slippery design, the mobile is sturdy, stylish and looks stunning.

Display

The mobile has a 5.5 inch Super IPS+ capacitive touchscreen capable of 1080p resolution. Under display setting, the saturation and warmth of the display can be changed. This setting lets you get a fine grain control on the display white balance and saturation level. There is also a dedicated blue light mode to aid reading on the mobile. The display has excellent brightness levels and contrast on indoors. The ambient light sensor is quick and responsive to change the brightness and contrast under direct sunlight. The display was very smooth and responsive to use. It has Corning Glass 3 protection and a 2.5 smooth curve along the edges. Display is one of strengths for the ZenFone 3.

Hardware

Asus Zenfone 3 is powered by Qualcomm MSM8953 Snapdragon 625 chipset with Octa-core processor clocked at 2.0 GHz. My review unit has 4GB or RAM and 64 GB of internal storage. It has Adreno 506 for graphics processing. The performance of the Zenfone 3 matches a high-end android mobile. I installed quite a number of games and apps on it and the mobile was able to handle everything I threw at it, with ease. The Zen UI is handled smoothly and never did I notice any lag or stutter. I play a lot of resource intensive games on my mobile and the Zenfone 3 proved that it has good gaming performance. The speaker in the mobile is of good quality. Asus has included a 5 magnet speaker with special HD sound encoding chips. Be it games, media or telephonic calls, the speaker does a really good job.

Telephony was good on the mobile and I have no issues using the 4G VoLTE SIM on this mobile. Network latching was spot on and the call quality was perfect. The fingerprint sensor was fast and accurate. Its placement at the back is also ideal for the finger to reach, though some might prefer it to be on the front. It unlocks the mobile from the sleep screen instantly if a valid print is detected. App lock was not possible with fingerprint and I would have preferred a bit more security features from the sensor, other than unlock, camera shutter and calls answering features.

The Asus Zenfone 3 may not have the top spec sheets of other competitors in this price range, but it offers comparable performance with slightly better user experience.

Software

The Zen UI as usual comes with a truck load of pre-installed applications and a few can be uninstalled. The base android version is 6.0.1 and it gets all the goodness of Android marshmallow. Asus Zen UI has not gone through major evolution over the years, but it is certainly refined. The UI is a lot smoother and snappier than the earlier versions. Here are about few among the 30 apps that comes preinstalled with the Zen UI.

• Audio Wizard – Audio presets for different situations
• Backup – Port data and apps between Asus devices
• Do it Later – To do reminder that syncs with native applications like Dialer and messenger. I found this really useful. If you miss a call, it goes to your “do-it-later” list and you will reminded to call the number later.
• Super Note – Handy notes taking software
• My Asus Service Center, ZenFone Care – Helps you with locating a service center and get online support
• Zentalk – Asus Forum
• Photo Collage – Make interesting photo collages
• Mini Movie – Cool movie editor
• Puffin – a crappy browser
• SIM city – An useless game
• Splendid – Must have been part of the settings. This feature lets you adjust the colors of the display
• WebStorage – Cloud storage
• Mobile Manager – Cache cleaner, Notification management, privacy and data control, Permissions manager – All in one mobile management app which I found really useful.

While most people may not like pre-installed software, there are a set of people who are not going to download apps from app stores. For them, these pre-installed apps would make a lot of sense. Some of these apps can be uninstalled and can be re-installed from the app store. The Zen UI supports a whole bunch of touch gestures and motion gestures. There are plenty of options under themes to customize and personalize the mobile as per your liking. The Easy mode is a mode with a minimal set of large icons that are easy to accessed. This is an accessible theme for senior citizens and people with special needs. Kids mode is my favorite mode. I can choose a set of apps that my kids can access and put the mobile on Kids mode and hand it over to them. I can also block calls while in Kids mode. Kids mode can also control the play time duration for the kids. This mode may also make you the most hated parent, but its a need of the hour.

The Zen UI is a very useful and functional skin. It is a maximal design with loads of features and pre-installed applications. For people who love minimalism, there must be a minimal mode. But I am not complaining a lot, because the UI is sensible and if you are not liking it, you can uninstall all the apps and go for a minimal launcher like Nova, which is exactly what I did. The hardware is optimized for the software and the interaction is not laggy. Zen UI on Zenfone 3 is smooth, snappy and functional.

Camera

The mobile has some major upgrades in terms of camera. The Zenfone 3 has a 16 MP sony IMX 298 sensor at the back and a 8 MP front facing camera that can auto-focus. The primary camera can record videos at 4k resolution, but only at 30 fps in 4k, HD or Full HD modes. The lens has a wide aperture of f/2.0. It has tritech auto focus, which is a combination of Laser, phase detection and continuous AF modes. The focus modes are chosen by the camera based on the situation and the subject. Zenfone 3 has 4 axis optical image stabilization for images and 3 axis electronic image stabilization for videos.

The camera UI has gone through a facelift. It is sleeker, simpler and faster. The app launches instantly and on the face of it, it has all the required controls with intuitive icons. A simple tap on the shutter icon or the volume buttons can be used to click a picture. The UI supports touch to focus and long touch locks the focus and you get controls to adjust the exposure compensation. Together with a sensible UI, the camera gives a pleasant user experience. The camera is fast and intuitive to use. Time between shots are very less and this camera is a breeze to use. Apart form the auto mode, there are 19 interesting modes to explore photography on the Zenfone 3.

1. Manual mode – gives you fine control on your shots. It can control, focusing, shutter speed, ISO, exposure compensation and white balance.
2. HDR Pro – Though the auto mode has Auto HDR, HDR mode give you enhanced HDR shots
3. Beautification – as the name suggests, this mode tends to enhance skin smoothing
4. Super Resolution – interlaces pixels and converts the 16 MP shot to a 50 MP shot. For best results, turn off optimization under the image settings
5. Children – Scans for children in the frame and automatically clicks pictures
6. Low light – Owl mode is a low resolution shot used to click better detailed pictures under low light
7. QR Code – scans QR code
8. Night mode – Clicks pictures with slow shutter speed at low light, without compromising on the pixel count
9. Depth of field – Clicks a series of pictures with multiple focus distance and lets you control the depth of focus
10. Effects – adds interesting effects to your shots
11. Selfie – Clicks selfies with the primary camera
12. GIF animation – Clicks a series of pictures and converts them into animated GIFs
13. Panorama – As the name suggests
14. Miniature – Clicks a picture emulating a miniature
15. Time rewind – Clicks a series of pictures and lets you choose the right frame
16. Smart remove – removes any moving object from the background
17. All smiles – Clicks pictures only when everyone in the frame smiles
18. Slow motion – Shoots slow motion videos, but there is not frame rate control
19. Time lapse – Shoots videos of time lapse and the time interval between shots can be from 1 second to 5 seconds

There is one feature which many may miss as it is hidden. Long press on the shutter will click a burst of images. These burst of images can be combined to form a single image, which I found to be a better quality. The images can also be converted to GIF image. Alternatively, you can choose one of them and discard the rest.

Check out the camera samples below

I found the Manual mode, the best mode to click pictures on a Zenfone 3. In the auto mode, the colors saturation is faded, but the details are preserved. The shots have amazing depth of field  The exposure is on the higher side and the dynamic range is less. All of this shortcomings can be controlled with the manual mode, if you know what you are doing. The optical image stabilization helps to a large extent in clicking sharp images. The performance of the camera is good under low light conditions as well. Asus camera performance has always been satisfactory and the Zenfone 3 does not disappoint me. It is an exciting camera to be used by both amateurs and professionals.

Battery

The ZE552KL has a 3000 mAh battery. It does not support quick charging, but it has fast charge. The stock charger is a 10W charger and I wish Asus has included its 18W turbo charger as a standard accessory. Luckily I have the turbo charger with me and I found that the mobile charges from 10-100% in under 1 hour using the turbo charger and it takes 1:45 min using the stock charger. The mobile gives me a whooping 4:35 minutes of screen on time under intensive usage. Under normal usage, it lasts for more than a day. Battery life on the Zenfone 3 is more than satisfactory and I have nothing to complain about.

Verdict

When you price a mobile at Rs 28k, one cannot take a decision without comparing it with OnePlus 3. It is a known fact that OnePlus 3 has a sturdy design and a great performance. The Zenfone 3 has a better aesthetic appeal, but it is a delicate piece of art. Unless you put a case on it, it cannot be used as a rugged daily driver. The Zenfone 3 has better camera performance than the OnePlus 3. In the software segment, the Zenfone 3 gives us a mixed feeling. Though it has a blazing fast UI, the inclusion of bloatware makes me incline towards OnePlus 3. Overall, the Zenfone 3 beats the OnePlus 3 in terms of display, battery performance, camera performance and design aesthetics.

If you are not comparing the OnePlus 3, you would find the the Zenfone 3 to be a clear choice. Get a sturdy case, uninstall all the pre-loaded applications, get a Nova Prime launcher and you are all set with a great mobile for the road warrior in you. So without a bit of hesitation, the ZenFone 3 climbs up the spot to be on our GadgetDetail recommendation list.