Review: Can Asus Zenfone 5 Take A Good Spot In The Smartphone Market?
Asus Zenfone 5, which was launched recently, has finally arrived in Dubai, UAE and the whole of Middle East. Take a look at this revolutionary gadget from this Taiwan based company, known for its best-selling tablets, being one of the top 3 notebook vendors and being an award winner with its motherboards. Let’s see whether its phone has the factors to compete with the leading brands and take a big chunk of sales in the market.
Check out the 3:30-min unboxing:
The Look
The 5-inch display, which is a bit wider than that of BlackBerry Z10’s, gives more pleasant viewing when watching your favorite YouTube prankster, or perhaps playing your child’s favorite Zombie Tsunami game.
The super glossy and classy Corning® Gorilla® Glass 3 makes it look like those of the leading brands’, considering Zenfone 5 is just a mid-range entry smartphone.
The sides, top and bottom parts are clean and seamlessly arranged. But the bit curvy yet plasticky back cover didn’t give much good impression. In a way that it controverts the awesome look of the front. On the other hand, it is but understandable as this helps in the total costing of the phone.
Easy with the hand, sleek and cool
Feel
For a regular hand size, Zenfone 5 is a perfect fit to grip. One can assure that it is safe from falling whenever you are on the go.
The 145g overall lightweight won’t give you that heavy feeling but it doesn’t necessarily debase the toughness of the phone.
The display panel is very smooth no matter which direction your fingers go when browsing, from apps to widgets, widgets to browsers, so on and so forth.
The resolution is a bit low though, compared to competitors, but one thing good here is that, it is light to the eyes unlike those with intensely-coloured resolution that’s heavy and tend to tire the eyes more quickly. This too won’t drain out the battery easily.
Functionality/Performance
With Asus’ very own ZenUI, the user experience is at par if not above the leading smartphones. Paired with other great features, its functionality and performance is at the highest level.
The Intel® Atom™ Multi-Core Z2560 Processor 1.6 GHz with Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, and with Android Jelly Bean 4.3 OS (but will update to 4.4 KitKat), make everything quite fast in this phone. Note that these combination of processor and OS is better than the competitors. Reason why there’s not a bit of a lag as its superbly crafted 60 milliseconds “touch response” holds true to its purpose. It also has the GloveTouch that even when you’re wearing winter gloves, browsing your Zenfone is very much possible.
ZenUI brings the crisp and ultimate display to Zenfone 5
Features
The PixelMaster camera technology makes every photo shooting activity satisfying. The 8 megapixel camera lens gives you that crystal crisp images. And it’s packed with great modes and option settings that other smartphones don’t have. The Asus engineers were even able to bring the “selfie” trend on it.
It also is a Dual-SIM smartphone. With support for DC-HSPA+ and a 42Mbit/s on both SIM cards, speed browsing is not affected and remains fast.
The phone supports USB OTG which helps transfer of files faster than any regular USBs. Aside from that, sharing is easy with its SHAREit app.
The sound experience is great with its plug and listen earpieces, that’s just seconds-behind Beats and Bose.
The What’s Next, Dot It Later, Open Cloud and Open Messaging are just some of the additional features which help you manage your daily activities well.
PixelMaster camera technology captures the smiles of these kiddos, vividly on HDR
(Above) The camera delivers superb colors on HDR. (Below) World’s tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa stands still from afar on MINIATURE
(Left) The music display is simple yet brilliant with easy buttons to tap to when shuffling. (Right) The equaliser gives that sound you prefer which ads more life to your music listening
Power
The battery life, (2110mAh 8Wh) despite its being fully loaded with features and functionalities, the phone would remain active for the whole day use. The power proves to be effective especially with its Power Saver options. Asus got the eco-drive thing like that on cars, and applied it to Zenfone. For three days now, since I started using it, the phone has proven so many things and the long lasting battery life is one of them.
Cost and Verdict
With its overall awesome smartphone experience, you will be shocked that it is priced at AED899/- ($245). The plastic back cover would be one of the reasons the company settled on this price, but still the Zenfone is more like of that leading brands in the market.
Verdict is 9 out of 10, with just small drawbacks.
To answer the question earlier, yes, Asus Zenfone 5 would cause dilemma to the leading brands and has the factors to take a good spot in the smartphone market.
