ASUS officially makes available the Zenfone 4, 5, and 6 here in the Philippines. The lineup is a threesome of smartphones that are much awaited by many for their balance in specs and expected pricing. Scroll past the jump for more details.
ASUS ZenFone 4 specs: 4-inch TFT LCD, 800 x 480 @233ppi Corning Gorilla Glass 3 Intel Atom Z2520 1.2GHz dual-core processor with HyperThreading Technology PowerVR SGX 544 MP2 1GB RAM 8GB internal storage 64GB via microSD WiFi 802.11 b/g/n 3G/HSPA Bluetooth 5MP rear camera VGA front-facing camera 1,200mAh battery Android 4.3 124.4 x 61.4 x 11.2mm 115g Price: Php3,995
ASUS ZenFone 5 specs: 5-inch IPS display, 1280 x 720 @294ppi Corning Gorilla Glass 3 Intel Atom Z2560 1.6GHz dual-core processor with HyperThreading Technology PowerVR SGX 544 MP2 2GB RAM 8GB/16GB internal storage 64GB via microSD WiFi 802.11 b/g/n 3G/HSPA+ Bluetooth 8MP BSI rear camera w/ LED flash 1080p video recording @30fps 2MP front-facing camera Non-removable 2110mAh battery Dual-SIM Android 4.3 148.2 x 72.8 x 10.3mm 144g Price: Php6,495
ASUS ZenFone 6 specs: 6-inch IPS display, 1280 x 720 @247ppi Corning Gorilla Glass 3 Intel Atom Z2580 2GHz dual-core processor with HyperThreading Technology PowerVR SGX 544 MP2 2GB RAM 8GB internal storage 64GB via microSD WiFi 802.11 b/g/n 3G/HSPA+ Bluetooth 13MP BSI rear camera w/ LED flash 1080p video recording @30fps 2MP front-facing camera Dual-SIM 3300mAh battery Android 4.3 166.9 x 84.3 x 9.9mm 200g Price: Php11,995
You may visit ASUS retailers to get yourself a Zenfone or you may purchase online starting 7pm today over at Lazada.
ASUS launches the Zenfone 5 which is a 5-inch phablet with an Intel Atom processor. It’s locally priced at Php6,495 and will be available starting next week.
ASUS ZenFone 5 specs: 5-inch IPS display, 1280 x 720 @294ppi Corning Gorilla Glass 3 Intel Atom Z2560 1.6GHz dual-core processor with HyperThreading Technology PowerVR SGX 544 MP2 2GB RAM 8GB/16GB internal storage 64GB via microSD WiFi 802.11 b/g/n 3G/HSPA+ Bluetooth 8MP BSI rear camera w/ LED flash 1080p video recording @30fps 2MP front-facing camera Non-removable 2110mAh battery Dual-SIM Android 4.3 148.2 x 72.8 x 10.3mm 144g Price: Php6,495
Asus is not done competing with the low-end smartphone market, as they have a ZenFone family recently announced poised to take over in 4, 5 and 6. What we have here now is the Asus ZenFone 5, the middle-child of the family, not too big, not too small – packing decent specs, good software, a great design and a polishing in almost all places – paired with a really affordable price tag. Does it have what it takes? Read on our full review and find out!
Design and Construction
We let a few people hold the phone and give their impressions on it, and so far, everybody liked it and no bad comment was given about the design. Asus took a lot of work into refining every detail with the ZenFone 5; from the buttons on the left side & the circular design on the bottom bezel of the screen to the curved back, we have no complaints.
As for attracting dirt and debris, Asus has done good as well. The back cover is entirely removable, and everything was easy to wipe off.
Although its body is mostly made of plastic, the handset still looks classy and sophisticated. Despite of being a little thick and bit hefty, it didn’t diminish the overall premium feel of the smartphone.
Display
The display of the ZenFone 5 is, well, 5-inches in size and it’s of the IPS LCD kind. Sadly, we did notice that the ZenFone’s screen still has a few bad angles – but not a serious dealbreaker from what we’ve seen.
At first look, we really thought the panel here is full HD – as colors are bright, vibrant and well-contrasted, but it’s actually just 720 x 1280. Nevertheless, text produced still looked sharp, and we’d like to give it to Asus for having a reading mode setting as it helped not straining my eyes using the phone in total darkness.
OS, Apps and UI
Android 4.3 powers the ZenFone, and we’ve received a few updates since we powered up the device already. None of them brought the device to KitKat yet, but we will probably see it in the future.
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again – Asus has done a good job with their skinning here – the Zen UI, It adds lots of features and apps that you’d actually use, and they all look so clean without being too in-your-face all the time. You have organized apps for display and audio settings, and a great set of widgets and apps such as SuperNote. From here, we wish all other manufacturers would take note as this is one of Asus’ big strengths right now in our opinion.
Multimedia & Camera
If you check out the lower back portion of the device, you’ll see a strip of holes dedicated for the speaker, but we find this rather deceptive. Pull off the cover or cover just a specific part of the strip and you’ll find that the speaker is only a small square. Nevertheless, it performs slightly better compared to average phone speakers out there, producing loud and quality audio, but it surely won’t blow anyone away.
The 8 megapixel camera here works great, especially for its caliber. It’s fast and it gives timely suggestions on what photo mode to use in a specific situation, and the modes themselves are really good just like the rest of the software in the ZenFone.
What blows us away is what Asus calls Pixelmaster, a combination of software and hardware that allows you to take bright 2 megapixel photos even in almost no lighting – and it works! We have a gallery of pictures down below covering depth of field, low-light & auto shots, so check those all out for yourself.
Following up the bright and sharp photos taken by the device, video works well too. We were tapping to focus in the sample video down below, but other than that, we’re contented with what we got:
Performance & Benchmarks
Asus has stuffed an Intel Atom inside this device. And while the chipset didn’t blow us away, we’re thankful that it’s not one of those processors that showboats the number of processors to woo consumers. In fact, despite being a dual-core CPU, it does more than okay and we didn’t encounter any problems with navigation and the like.
What we did encounter, however, are few crashes from opening up games when power saver mode was on. The handset froze on few occassions and when we had to turn off the screen, the whole device shut down as well. It’s probably some GPU related problem, but it didn’t occur that frequently as we were able to play a few graphic intensive games at normal settings (it starts to lag when it gets heavier).
Antutu – 22,808
Quadrant – 11,033
Nenamark – 60.3
Call Quality & Battery Life
With connectivity in mind, we did not have anything deviating from the usual. There is dual SIM support here, the earpiece is okay, and from places where we usually test our gadgets, it manages to capture our WiFi connection easily.
On standby, the Asus ZenFone 5 did really well lasting us days, but after putting it through our battery test, draining the battery with 50% brightness and 50% audio volume on video playback, we managed to drain the battery in around five hours and 10 minutes, which is to say it’s not bad, but it’s not that impressive either.
Charging the battery takes the usual time here, maybe even slower, but we’ve noted that as we tried using the bundled charger on other phones and it will take so long before we even get to half a charge.
Conclusion
With almost nothing to complain about, the ZenFone 5 is one of those phones that say “premium but affordable devices are possible”. Hardware and software combined, the ZenFone is very polished. However, we do have a few gripes with the overall performance, and we’re hoping an update comes to fix that, but apart from what we mentioned, this is one affordable smartphone that’s greatly put together.
The local pricing of the Asus ZenFone 5, as of the time of writing, is still not set. But it’s already available in some parts of the world for USD149 or estimated 6,500 in our local currency, making it a very interesting proposition for the budget-conscious crowd. Let’s just hope that the local SRP will be somewhere close to what we’re expecting.
ASUS ZenFone 5 specs: 5-inch IPS LCD display, 1280 x 720 @294ppi Intel Atom Z2580 2GHz dual-core processor PowerVR SGX 544 MP2 2GB RAM 16GB internal storage 64GB via microSD WiFi 802.11 b/g/n 3G/HSPA+ Bluetooth 8MP BSI rear camera w/ LED flash 1080p video recording @30fps 2MP front-facing camera 2100mAh battery Android 4.3 148.2 x 72.8 x 10.3 mm 144 grams Colors: Charcoal Black, Pearl White, Cherry Red, and Champagne Gold
We’ve been trying to source any of the three (3) Zenfone since two months ago and our attempt to get one from a recent visit to Thailand was unsuccessful. Fortunately, there were a lot of stocks in Taiwan last week during our visit there so we managed to get the Asus ZenFone 5 right away.
We’ve seen the new ZenFone line-up as early as January during CES in Las Vegas, and then again at MWC in Barcelona in February so we pretty much know how they look like and how they feel.
We were initially contemplating between getting the ZenFone 5 and the ZenFone 6 but ended up with the ZenFone 5 because it was more to our liking (right size and more affordable).
The handset came in black, white and gold with a special red variant which is more expensive. We picked the gold one instead.
The handset feels slightly large and heavy for its 5-inch display. It’s also a bit bulky and measures 10.3mm at its thickest point.
The ZenFone design is similar to the PadFone and the Zenbook with its metallic finish, especially at the back. That, despite the fact that it’s just made out of some fine polycarbonate, the paint finish is pretty convincing.
Perhaps, if we need to nitpick, our only issue with the front panel is that there are a lot of un-used space and the size of the bezel is less than ideal. This gives the ZenFone 5 a larger-than-usual profile for a 5-incher.
We liked that concetric pattern at the lower corner of the front panel just below the soft keys. They remind us of the Zenbook laser-etched engraving from the earlier generation Asus ultrabooks.
And for a sub-10k smartphone, the ZenFone 5 has a pretty impressive configuration. The variant that we got has a 16GB internal storage and 2GB of RAM although the lower variant only has 8GB storage and 1GB RAM.
ASUS ZenFone 5 specs:
5-inch IPS display @ 1280×720 pixels, 294ppi
Intel Atom Z2580 2GHz dual-core processor
PowerVR SGX 544 MP2
1GB/2GB RAM
8GB, 16GB, 32GB internal storage
64GB via microSD
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
3G/HSPA+
Dual-SIM, Dual-Standby
Bluetooth 4.0
GPS with aGPS
8MP BSI rear camera w/ LED flash
1080p video recording @30fps
2MP front-facing camera
Li-Ion 2,050mAh battery
Android 4.3
148.2 x 72.8 x 10.3 mm (dimensions)
144 grams (weight)
We’ll see if that 2,050mAh battery can last us the whole day in our bench test.
The ZenFone UI looks fresh and simple, has a flat UI design and familiar interface. It’s one of the nicest UI we’ve seen around and based on our short use, it’s very snappy and responsive.
As for the pricing, here are the most common retail prices we’ve seen in stores in Taipei.
