TheZenfone Max now runs on Android Marshmallow out-of-the-box, wrapped under Asus' ZenUI. Like last year though, the UI still preloads all the essential services as separate apps.
Verdict We’re not giving the Zenfone 3 a score just yet, since Asus hasn’t confirmed the phone’s UK price and there were some potentially atypical issues with out test unit that we need to investigate What is the Zenfone 3? Since Motorola threw down the gauntlet with its original Moto G, smartphone makers have been embroiled in a price-slashing war. As a result, we’ve seen all manner of fantastic value-for-money handsets appear, such as the OnePlus 3, Nexus 6P and Moto Z Play. The Zenfone 3 is Asus’ stab at the market, and aims to offer top-end-ish hardware at a price point that won’t break the bank. Having had a play, I can confirm that the device certainly looks the part and generally delivers great performance on a par with the Huawei Nova and Alcatel Idol 4S. However, as is the case with almost all mid-range handsets right now, its software leaves a lot to be desired. Related Best Smartphones to Buy Zenfone 3 – Design and Display The phone looks like a slightly more boxy Samsung Galaxy S7. Featuring a glass back and metal sides, were it not for the Asus logo and absence of a physical home button you could easily mistake the Zenfone for a Samsung handset. Some will bemoan the lack of originality, but in my mind the Zenfone’s design looks far nicer than that of most mid-range handsets. Technically, on paper the Zenfone 3 is an impressive bit of kit. Despite being a mid-range handset, Asus hasn’t made too many compromises. Around the back you’ll find a fingerprint scanner, which can used to unlock the phone or approve specific actions – such as in-app payments. On the bottom you’ll find a USB Type-C charging port, as opposed to the older and slower Micro USB. The SIM tray also contains a microSD card slot, making it quick and easy to upgrade the handset’s built-in 64GB of space. A cheaper 32GB model is also available for those with lower storage requirements. Audio fans will be pleased to see that Asus hasn’t removed the jack – looking at you, Apple. The phone’s slightly curved edges, reasonable thickness and 155g weight also make it surprisingly comfortable to hold when compared to other glass-backed phones – the Galaxy S7, for example. I’m a little concerned about build quality, though. The glass rear – like on past Samsung and Sony phones – feels like it will pick up scratches fairly easily. It’s also a smudge magnet, which will be an annoyance for folk who like their phone to look glass front on the model I was testing hadn’t been glued down properly. The bottom-left corner would lift a fraction of a millimetre off the phone’s main body, regularly letting light from the screen’s LEDs leak out. Since I’ve only had a chance to use one Zenfone 3, I can’t confirm if this is an isolated incident. Otherwise, the screen is pretty good for an affordable phone. The 1080p resolution may not match higher-end handsets, but it’s more than sharp enough and you’ll struggle to spot individual pixels. The IPS panel has also been well calibrated, and unlike the OnePlus 3’s AMOLED screen, which was horribly oversaturated, the Zenfone’s display offers up a nice neutral tone. Whites are clean and colours look natural. Some will find the Zenfone 3’s native display setting a little too cool, but I like it. Those who want more pop can adjust the screen’s colour temperature in the Zenfone’s Settings menu, thanks to the addition of Asus’ ZenUI software. Zenfone 3 – Software, Performance and Battery The aforementioned colour temperature setting is pretty much the only feature I like about ZenUI. I’ve never been a fan of Android skins, since they generally delay how quickly phones can receive software updates and also add pointless bloatware. There’s no word if the Zenfone will be upgraded to Nougat, but the handset certainly is full of bloatware. ZenUI isn’t the worst offender I’ve seen in this regard – that honour is reserved for Huawei and its Emotion UI – but Asus’ skin still adds more duplicate apps and pointless features than I’d like. Opening up the app tray you’ll see everything from clone Asus cloud storage apps that offer little improvement on Google’s central Drive, to pointless duplicate gallery and photo services that don’t add anything to the OS’s core offering. I’m also not sold on the UI changes that Asus has made to Android. The Settings menu has been entirely reconfigured, to the point that even seasoned Android users will struggle to find certain options. The pull-down Quick Settings and Notifications bar has also been redesigned, replacing Marshmallow’s simple, to-the-point UI design with childlike spherical shortcuts. The design change isn’t terrible, but it just feels unnecessary and is indicative of pretty much every aspect of ZenUI. To be fair, this isn’t an issue that affects Asus alone. Bloatware and pointless UI changes are a common issue on 99% of mid-range handsets I see, including the OnePlus 3, Huawei Nova and Alcatel Idol 4S. I can’t help but wish that companies would listen to consumers and realise that most people would be more than happy with unskinned Android on their phones. Over my week-plus of using the phone I haven’t experienced that many surprise bugs or unexpected glitches, which are another common problem on phones with heavy Android skins. The octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 and 4GB of RAM performed better on the Zenfone than the Huawei Nova, which has the same specs. For much of the time, the phone glided between menus and opened apps chug-free. Games did run on the device, but the Zenfone 3 took longer to load intensive titles such as Riptide and Asphalt than top-end phones with 820 CPUs. The only performance issue I did notice is that during prolonged video streaming and gaming sessions the Zenfone 3 would sometimes heat up. The temperature wasn’t Galaxy Note 7 explosive, but it was enough to cause concern. The Zenfone’s synthetic benchmark scores did reveal some performance shortcomings, however. The handset’s 62,371 score on the generalist AnTuTu test is lower than most mid-range handsets, such as the similarly specced Idol 4S, which score 76,756. The same issue occurred on the gaming focused 3DMark IceStorm Unlimited test, where the Zenfone 3 scored 14,037. The Idol 4S scored a more robust 17,554. Related Best Android Smartphones Zenfone 3 – Battery Battery life is one area where the Zenfone 3 excelled during my tests. The non-removable Li-Ion 3,000mAh battery easily lasted one and a half – if not two – days in regular use off a single charge. Regular use entailed listening to music on the way to and from work, playing some games over lunch, making and taking a few calls, regularly checking social media and email, and watching an episode of Stranger Things on Netflix before bed. The Zenfone 3 also dealt with demanding tasks, such as video streaming and 3D gaming, pretty well. Streaming video over Wi-Fi with the screen at 75% brightness, the Zenfone 3 lost between 8-11% of its charge per hour. Competing handsets generally lose between 10-15% of their charge tasked with the same test. Playing 3D games such as Riptide GP2, the Zenfone 3 lost between 13-16% of its battery per hour – again, this is impressive. In the past, the majority of mid-range phones I’ve tested have lost as much as 20-25% of their battery per hour when gaming. Buy Now Asus Zenfone 3 at $286 Zenfone 3 – Camera Camera tech is an area with which most mid-range phones struggle. The majority come with undersized sensors and don’t have the hardware to capture anything but holiday selfies and photos for sharing on social media. The Zenfone 3 doesn’t change this trend, but as phone cameras go, it isn’t terrible. The 16-megapixel rear camera on paper beats the specifications of most mid-range handsets. The f/ aperture is pretty much par for the course, but the Sony IMX298 camera sensor is a step up from the components used on most sub-£400 handsets. For a mid-range phone, the Zenfone 3’s camera isn’t badIt doesn’t oversharpen……but performance doesn’t match that of cameras on more expensive handsets, such as the Galaxy S7The sensor is identical to the one in the OnePlus 3 and means that the phone is capable of capturing reasonably good photos in decent light. Shooting around London during one of the city’s rare sunny days, I was able to capture good cityscapes with decent contrast and suitable detail. Colours don’t look exaggerated and, unlike quite a number of handsets, the phone doesn’t oversharpen images. The autofocus is also okay, but not great. Much of the time it will focus on your intended shot within only milliseconds but, like all the phone cameras I test, it struggles with moving objects. The inclusion of optical image stabilisation OIS is a rare sight in the mid-range market, and on paper this should elevate the Zenfone 3 above the competition when it comes to low-light performance. However, during my tests I noticed only a negligible improvement and still wouldn’t recommend the phone for night-time photography, or low-light clubs shots without the LED flash. Even with OIS, noise crept into photos taken in even moderately dim conditions. As a result, captured photos weren’t good enough for sharing, even on Facebook. The 8-megapixel front camera has the same f/ aperture and can record video at 1080p, which makes it more than good enough for basic video calling. You’d do well to avoid the beauty mode, though. Related Best Smartphones 2016 First Impressions As mid-range phones go, there’s plenty to like about the Zenfone 3. The handset I tested offered great battery life, reasonable performance, and featured a capable for the money camera and nicely balanced display. ZenUI is a fairly awful Android implementation, but it’s just one of many that are clogging up the world of mid-range handsets. If the Zenfone 3 is competitively priced in the UK, as it is in many other markets, the phone could be a solid choice for buyers on a budget. However, it will only deliver on its opening promise if my initial concerns about build quality aren’t found to be a problem across the board. How we test phones We test every mobile phone we review thoroughly. We use industry standard tests to compare features properly and we use the phone as our main device over the review period. We’ll always tell you what we find and we never, ever, accept money to review a product. Find out more about how we test in our ethics policy. Used as our main phone for the review period Reviewed using respected industry benchmarks and real world testing Always has a SIM card installed Tested with phone calls, games and popular apps Trusted Score
AsusZenfone 3 ZE552KL Android smartphone. Announced May 2016. Features 5.5″ display, Snapdragon 625 chipset, 16 MP primary camera, 8 MP front camera, 3000 mAh battery, 64 GB storage, 4 GB RAM, Corning Gorilla Glass 3. f/2.0, PDAF, Laser AF, 3-axis OIS: Features: Dual-LED dual-tone flash, panorama, HDR: Video: 4K@30fps: Selfie Camera
Asus Zenfone 3 Laser detailed review Remember the teacher’s pet back in school? The kid who would ruin things for all others? That’s pretty much how the sub-20k market works today. Phones like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 and LeEco Le 2 ruin things for most other companies. But, does that mean everyone should, or may, provide the same value? Well, Asus doesn’t think so. The Asus Zenfone 3 Laser is priced at Rs. 18,999, almost double its predecessor, and its specifications do not match its price tag, following current market trends. Why, then, is Asus betting that you’ll buy this phone? Here’s what we found in our review of the Asus Zenfone 3 Laser. Build and Design Starting with the obvious, the Zenfone 3 Laser looks similar to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3. However, I prefer this design. The Laser decidedly feels lighter, thinner and more premium as well, giving it ergonomic value over its competitors. The phone nestles in your palm and the curves near the edges make it easier to use with one hand. While it does look like the Redmi Note 3, the Zenfone 3 Laser is thinner and lighter To be clear, the Zenfone 3 Laser isn’t perfectly suited for single-handed usage, but it’s still a pretty efficient design. The back has a metallic finish, which feels good, especially because of its smudge resistant, and oleophobic properties. It’s smooth and seamless, and feels more “metallic” than similarly designed phones. The body also seems well put-together and sturdy, capable of withstanding usual scratches, like those caused by keys in pocket. It may get scratched if dropped, though. The only real fault in the design is in the cuts for the micro-USB port and screws at the bottom. You probably won’t even feel them, but running your fingers across these holes reveal lack of polish. The corners of these holes are sharp, and can occasionally leave marks on your hands. The capacitive buttons on the front aren't backlit Asus' concentric circles design is seen only on the Power On/Off button and Volume Rocker Also, the capacitive back, home and recents buttons below the display aren’t backlit. Personally, I don’t mind that, but many do. You’ll find the earpiece, front camera and sensor hub above the display, and the soon-to-be obsolete if Apple has its way headphone jack is on the top as well. The biggest misstep with the Zenfone 3 Laser’s design is in the fingerprint sensor. Asus decided to go with one on the back, but with a thinner, rectangular design. This reduces the surface area for your finger to interact with the sensor, and makes it tougher to find. While it’s good at recognising your print, the smaller surface area makes it seem slower because you’ll often be shifting your finger to find the right spot. This, combined with the rather slow phone more on that later, makes the fingerprint sensor quite unsavoury. Interestingly, Asus’ peculiar concentric circles’ design can only be found on the home button, and the volume rocker on the right. This, for me, is a big positive. The concentric circles looked good on the Zenfone 5 and that family, but I’ve found them disagreeable on all Asus phones since then. The phone also has a sizeable camera bump at the back, with a shiny metal lining around the camera unit. On either sides of this are the dual-LED flash and the Laser AF system. Overall, I’m quite satisfied with the Zenfone 3 Laser’s design. Yes, Asus can refine it more, but it’s still one of the better-designed smartphones in this price range. It feels premium enough, and is even quite ergonomic, despite the display. Display You’re looking at a pretty pixel-dense display, measuring 401ppi and with a curved screen on top. It’s reasonably good with colours, although it doesn’t provide the deepest blacks. It’s on the upper end of the IPS LCD family, though, and that should satisfy most. Asus also allows you to tweak the display’s colour temperature, hue etc., using its preinstalled Hue app. There’s a slight shift in colours from some angles, but not enough to complain. The achieves maximum luminance of 598 Lux, which is not the best but works. While colours and sharpness aren’t really an issue, I’m not a big fan of the display’s reflectiveness. The glossy display affects sunlight visibility, which isn’t the best, and LED lights in your home will also be in conflict. You may have to hold the phone in your hand throughout full movies, unless you find a spot away from light sources. Further, Asus uses Corning Gorilla Glass for the screen, which is fine. However, the display is somewhat weak against oily fingers. Moreover, the touch sensitivity doesn’t seem as good as it is on most smartphones today, irrespective of price. Touch latency is good enough, but the display doesn’t feel very premium. User Interface Even Asus’ ZenUI does not feel premium. The Zenfone 3 Laser, like all other phones in the Zenfone 3 family, have ZenUI layered over Android Marshmallow, to be precise. Asus’ UI is bloated and lacks polish. There’s just too much happening on the phone. I can’t remember a time when an Asus app didn’t notify me of something I didn’t care about. Even the Splendid app, which tweaks display temperature, could simply have been put into the Settings menu. Instead, Asus created a whole new app for it, adding to clutter and disturbance. You have apps like Do It Later, Flashlight, Go2Pay, Mobile Manager, MiniMovie, Puffin and so on. All of these can be replaced by better apps from the Play Store, and I had little use for them. There’s even a Game Genie that’ll appear as a floating bubble while you game. It makes no sense, since the Zenfone 3 Laser struggles to render high frame rates on graphically intensive games in the first place. Asus has even provided a Laser Ruler app, which apparently uses the Laser auto-focus to measure the distance to an object. The app, however, can’t measure anything over 50 centimetres, and I didn’t find any practical real-world use case for it. Most of Asus’ apps can’t be uninstalled, either. You can disable them to avoid annoying notifications, but you’d still not get that lost space back, and each megabyte matters today. This is even more of an issue because all of these apps are asking for additional permissions to run, and that can be irksome. Bloatware aside, ZenUI feels like the early days of Samsung’s Touchwiz. I find it childish, and an UI made simply for the sake of differentiation. If there are background enhancements to the Android software, they’re not discernible on regular usage, and that makes the UI all the more unnecessary. The only aspect of ZenUI that’s useful and you’ll really use is Pixelmaster which is built into the camera app. We’ll discuss this when we get to the camera. Performance For me, the most disappointing aspect of the Zenfone 3 Laser is its performance. It’s a slow smartphone that doesn’t justify its price tag. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 430 SoC makes sense on a sub-10k smartphone, but not here, and especially not with a Snapdragon 820-powered device available at a lower price point the Lenovo Z2 Plus. In practice, you’ll easily find lags and stutters on the Zenfone 3 Laser. It lags heavily on games like Injustice Gods Among Us and Asphalt 8, and takes considerable durations to load. The phone’s slow single-core performance speeds increase app load times - for anything from Facebook to Subway Surfer, and calling one app from another results in noticeable lags. As mentioned before, the fingerprint sensor is slow as well. The upside with all this is that the Zenfone 3 Laser doesn’t heat up. Under a temperature of 24 degree Celsius outside, the Laser doesn’t rise beyond 38 degrees after over 15 minutes of gaming, and recording video for 10 minutes takes the temperature to about degrees. This, though, is warranted, given the weak performance. The Snapdragon 430 doesn’t support 4K video, which is disappointing for a camera-centric smartphone, and I’m willing to trade a few degrees for better performance. The Zenfone 3 Laser is slower than a last-gen smartphone like the Moto X Play. The Power Management settings offer slight customisation to the performance. You can choose between Super Saving, Power Saving, Normal and Performance modes. The temperatures above are on the Normal mode, and turning on Performance Mode doesn’t bring much of a difference, either. Our Asus Zenfone 3 Laser stress test has more on this. Camera The absence of snappy, fluid performance also means that the camera app takes a second to load. This means that you’ll often miss a moment, because the camera was loading. However, when it does load, the Zenfone 3 Laser does a reasonably good job. It has a 13MP f/ camera with the Sony IMX214 sensor and pixel size. It’s quite good under well-lit conditions and sunlight outdoors. Under white LED lights, the phone loses some details to noise, and images aren’t very sharp. However, colours are retained quite well across various lighting conditions. Essentially, you’ll be fine unless you’re zooming into photos. Asus Zenfone 3 Laser Camera Samples Asus says, the Laser AF system focuses in seconds, which may even be true under ideal conditions. In practice, though, your hand shakes and the phone will keep changing focus points the longer you point the camera at a subject. Moreover, Laser AF is best suited for close-up photography, and during low light shots. And that is where the Zenfone 3 Laser excels. Under low light, close-ups are decent, but the phone creates considerable noise and loses a lot of details when shooting scenes. Low light shots are considerably enhanced by the low light mode, though, and it is well ahead of most of its competitors. Here again, speed matters. Asus’ slow camera makes it difficult to just point and shoot. You’ll get good photos if you have the time to fix focus manually, or by tapping the screen, but the auto mode isn’t very dependable. On auto, the camera sometimes messes up the white balance and subdues colours. Pixelmaster This is where Pixelmaster comes in. Asus’ camera app gives you a Manual mode with control over ISO, White Balance, Exposure Value, Focus and Shutter Speed. There are also Super Resolution, Low Light, Manual, HDR Pro, Beautification and Children modes. Of these, the low light mode is the really useful one, but it also adds a few button taps, thereby increasing the time taken to shoot a photo. This mode basically increases image brightness, while softening the details. It’s useful, but would have been better had Asus made it a part of the regular Pixelmaster algorithm than instead of adding a separate button for it. The Super Resolution mode allows you to take 52MP photos, by taking multiple images using the 13MP camera and then combining them together. You can have some fun with it, but it remains more of a gimmick, as it has been before. In general, you’ll be using the auto-mode most often, which can shoot in HDR, HDR Auto and simple auto modes. Battery A 3000mAh battery drives the Zenfone 3 Laser, and as in the Zenfone 3, it lasts quite long. On heavy usage, with lots of browsing, calling, texts, IMs, social networking, and some video, the phone dropped from 80% to 20% battery in about 8-9 hours. That’s quite good, considering the usage. A full workday’s battery life is easily obtainable, and for many others, it’ll run for over a day and a half. In practice, charging it every night should be enough, which is pretty much the industry standard. The Performance Mode doesn’t seem to affect battery life much either, which is warranted given that the performance doesn’t increase much, either. You can use Asus’ power manager when needed, but it’s pretty standard. The more intense power saving modes turn off the mobile data and limit both the processor, and screen brightness. I wonder how difficult it would be to drop the screen resolution as well, though. That’s a feature I quite liked on Huawei’s EMUI. Bottomline The Asus Zenfone 3 Laser has a better camera than the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, LeEco Le 2, Lenovo Z2 Plus and Xiaomi Mi Max. However, these phones are also miles ahead in performance. In my opinion, what those phones lack in the camera department, they more than make up for in others, and that’s why I wouldn’t recommend the Zenfone 3 Laser over them. Asus has done a good job designing this phone, and it has a decent display as well, but there are ifs and buts all over, and the phone is not very good in overall terms. If you want a camera-centric smartphone, the Nubia Z11 Mini which we’ll be reviewing soon is a better buy. It’s cheaper and faster than the Zenfone 3 Laser, with a very good camera. Asus Zenfone 3 Laser Key Specs, Price and Launch Date Price ₹18999 Release Date 08 Nov 2016 Variant 32GB Market Status Launched Key Specs Screen Size 1080 x 1920 Camera 13 8 MP Memory 32 GB/4 GB Battery 3000 mAh Related Reviews About Me Trying to explain technology to my parents. Failing miserably. Read More
Theengine of the Z2 Laser 5.5S is the one responsible for the smooth operation of the device. It has a 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 MSM8939 octa-core CPU which is paired with Adreno 405 GPU plus an upgraded RAM of 3GB. Throughout the review, we only had a fast and smooth performance of the device. This is given that we only used common apps
Weare lucky to have a preview of the Zenfone 3 Zoom which was announced at the CES 2017. News Gadgets Reviews First Look: Asus Zenfone 3 Zoom (Philippines) Tito Raffy January 5, 2017. 0 The placement of the dual 12MP camera si likened to the iPhone 7 Plus and dual LED flash and Laser AF is right below the camera. The dual 12MP camera
ContinueReading ASUS Zenfone 3 Laser Review: The True Mid-range Zenfone 3? IF. Zenfone 3 Laser ZC551KL Unboxing, Initial Review: The Zenfone You'll Buy This Christmas? It's been a few months since we last saw the Zenfone 3 Laser after it was announced unexpectedly in Vietnam, along with its big-batteried brother, the Zenfone 3 Max. We've
TheAsus Zenfone 3 Laser is powerful and premium looking handset, I expected the camera to be as good as the Zenfone 2 Laser, unfortunately it was not, though videos are much better (with video stabilization). This handset cannot play 4K videos. Zenfone 3 Laser is a bit pricey. Rating 4 out of 5. Asus Zenfone 3 laser is available for Rs. 18,999.
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asus zenfone 3 laser review
