The much awaited Asus Zenfone 2 will be launching in India on April 23. The device is the first smartphone ever to have 4GB of RAM, but Asus is going to offer at least three skews of the device. There will be 16GB, 32GB and 64GB variants, but from our first impressions, we are pretty sure there'll be 2GB and 4GB RAM variants for the 32 and 64GB versions. Here's what we thought of the device after having spent about half an hour with it.
Display
The 5.5 inch 1080p panel on the Asus Zenfone 2 may not be as vibrant as the Super AMOLEDs on Samsung devices, but it is a very balanced display. It's just sharp enough to fit a mid-range price tag and quite bright. That said, we have seen better looking displays on smartphones before.
Build and Design
While the overall design philosophy is very close to the HTC One M8, the Zenfone 2 reminds us more of the LG G3. This is not only because of the volume rocker placed at the back, the Zenfone 2 has a plasticky feel as opposed to the solid metallic build of the M8. That said, we liked the overall build quality of the G3 and we like the Zenfone 2 as well.
A very good thing about the Asus Zenfone 2 is that the phone weighs 170 grams, but doesn't feel like it. The curved back design, which is similar to the HTC One M8, fits into your hand and can help you overlook the overall bulk of the device.
While LG puts both the volume rocker and power buttons on the back, Asus has placed the power button on the top of the phone. Think of an amalgamation of the HTC One M8 and LG G3 and you have the design of the Zenfone 2.
Now throw the Zenfone 5 into that mix.
What's missing from the overall design is the seamlessness with which the rear cover on the G3 and One M8 blend into the front part of the phones. The black front portion of the Zenfone 2 (is similar to the Zenfone 5) is made out of glossy plastic and it looks out of place. For a mid-range smartphone, this is more than acceptable, but the phone may have looked much better with a metallic finish on the sides and bottom bezels as well.
Variants
We started this slideshow with speculations about there being four variants of this device. This is why.
In the phone that we were using here, we saw 32GB storage space and 4GB of RAM. In addition, the 64GB variant also has a 4GB version. This suggests that while the 16GB version will have 2GB of RAM, the 32 and 64GB variants of the Zenfone 2 will come with two different RAM options.
ZenUI
With its ZenUI, Asus has tried very hard to build a good user experience. The UI doesn't quite match up to Xiaomi's MiUI though. While we didn't see any lags whatsoever on the demo device, there are a lot of apps in ZenUI, which you may not need and will hence consider to be bloatware.
Performance
Half an hour with a smartphone is nowhere close to being enough to gauge its performance. The fact that this phone has 4GB of RAM of course raises our expectations and the demo devices wer really smooth. That said, we'll hold our judgement till we're done with the review next week.
Camera
The 13MP rear camera is something Asus is playing up on this smartphone. In the low and uneven lighting of the demo area, the phone didn't seem to do very well. That said, we can't think of many smartphones that would have done well in such lighting. We'll test this one out in the full review as well.
Front Camera
Asus has added a panorama mode to the front camera, which could be useful for selfie lovers. Apart from that, the overall quality of the 5MP front camera is yet to be tested.
Bottomline
If there's one thing that we're absolutely certain about, it's that the Zenfone 2 is no ordinary Zenfone. Asus has put a lot of time and effort into this phone and come up with a really good device. With the right pricing, you may be looking at the best VFM smartphone today.
Here are a couple of more pictures of the Zenfone 2.
