Twitter https://www.facebook.com/giridharInstagaram https://www.instagram.com/phonelicious/More reviews at http://www.p ReviewAsus Zenfone 3 A head turner in a sea of Android options. Like GearBrain on Facebook. Lauren Barack. December 27 2016. Overall Rating: 8. 10. ASUS ZenFone 3 Laser 5.5-inch Glacier Silver [ZC551KL] Laser auto-focus, 13MP Rear / 8MP Front camera, IPS FHD display, 2GB RAM, 32GB storage. Asusintroduced its 2015 flagship Zenfone 2 in 2015 and since then the Taiwanese tech giant is flooding the market with its look alike. Last month the company introduced Zenfone 2 Deluxe, Selfie and the Zenfone 2 Laser .The later one is available in two variants; one is with 5 inch display and the other with a 5.5 inch display that we have today as the review unit. Vay Tiền Trả Góp Theo Tháng Chỉ Cần Cmnd Hỗ Trợ Nợ Xấu. Asus announced the ZenFone 3 series during Computex 2016. The company launched three devices, and the Zenfone 3 Laser was announced after Computex. We have already reviewed Asus ZenFone 3 Max and Asus ZenFone 3 Ultra, and in this review, I will be talking about the Asus ZenFone 3 Laser. As expected from the announcements, ZenFone 3, ZenFone 3 Max and Zenfone 3 Ultra, all cater to a particular subset of the audience and work well for what they offer. You can check out the detailed breakup of the three smartphones in the reviews done for the devices. Asus Zenfone 3 Laser is pegged to be the camera-centric smartphone with Laser autofocus mechanism and the stresses on delivering good image quality. Build and Design / 10 Asus ZenFone 3 Laser comes with an inspiring design, and the philosophy follows the general guidelines set by the ZenFone 3 series, going with an all metal body. You get the physical navigation buttons on the bottom which can't be reassigned and are not backlit. There is no textured back or fancy design element to make it stand out in the sea of smartphones in the same or even lower price bracket. According to the website, the smartphone weighs 150g with dimensions of 149 x 76 x mm. The overall feel of the device is sturdy with no squeaky or loose parts, thereby giving it a durable feel. You will find the volume rocker and the power button on the top right side of the smartphone with the SIM tray located on the top of the left side of the smartphone. One thing to note is that the Sand Gold variant gives the smartphone a dull look which is not the case in the Asus ZenFone 3, ZenFone 3 Max, ZenFone 3 Ultra or even the ZenFone 3 Deluxe. The fingerprint sensor comes on the back of the smartphone, and it does not come in the circular form factor as most smartphones have these days. Instead, the fingerprint sensor comes in a narrow rectangle with rounded corners. This form factor of the fingerprint sensor makes it difficult for the users despite the increase in the surface area, as the increased yet restricted surface area reduces the accurate detection of the fingerprint. You will find the speaker grill along with the microUSB port on the bottom edge of the smartphone with the headphone jack on the top. Features 7 / 10 Asus ZenFone 3 Laser packs an Octa-core Qualcomm MSM8937 Snapdragon 430 processor clocked at with Adreno 505 GPU. I got the 4GB RAM with 64GB internal storage variant for review. But the phone also comes in 2GB RAM and 32GB internal storage option. If you are running out of storage space, then you can add a microSD card up to 256GB in the second SIM slot. Laser has a IPS LCD with an effective resolution of 1080x1920 at 401ppi pixel density covered with Gorilla Glass 3 for additional protection. Asus has added a 13MP camera module along with laser autofocus with f/ aperture dual-tone LED flash on the back. This camera module is capable of shooting video at 1080p resolution at 30fps. Also, the phone sports an 8MP camera module with f/ aperture on the front. ZenFone 3 Laser is equipped with Wi-Fi a/b/g/n/ac, Wi-Fi Direct, hotspot, Bluetooth GPS with A-GPS, GLONASS and BDS, microUSB port with fast-charging support sort of depending on the max current supplied by the adapter and USB On-The-Go support. The smartphone also provides headphone jack on the top side of the smartphone, IR port and FM radio support along with hybrid dual SIM slots one nano SIM + one micro SIM or one nano SIM + one microSD. The company has added fingerprint sensor on the rear side of the smartphone right below the camera module along with an accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity and compass sensors. You get a 3000mAh Lithium-Ion non-removable battery in the device which performs decently. Display / 10 Asus ZenFone 3 Laser has a respectable FullHD IPS LCD display. The display seems to hold on its own during daily usage. The screen is reflective, and you will face discomfort while working in direct sunlight and will need to re-adjust your viewing angles. One thing to note is that the screen brightness seems to be strangely low. The LCD IPS display provides decent viewing angles despite seeming a bit dim when viewed from sides. But overall, I had a good time while reading, web browsing, gaming or watching videos on the display. The colours, contrast and vibrancy of the display was fairly decent at all times. There is no special mode for outdoors, and I wish that Asus had added something for the direct-in-sun workflow which could make working easier. Software 7 / 10 Asus ZenFone 3 Laser runs Android Marshmallow out of the box along with the custom ZenUI on the top of the OS. There are elements like the three quick-launch options on the lock-screen and the folder-style on the home screen that could have been better. Thankfully ZenUI does give you the option to turn the quick-launch options off which helps it give more AOSP like experience. Asus has packed 'Mobile Manager' as part of its ZenUI which gives you information on data usage, power saving modes, notifications and privacy and security. This works amazingly in principle, giving you quick access to everything important that you need to take control of. But also, they have added 'Cleanup' and 'Boost' options on the 'Mobile Manager' which doesn't make sense to me. Primarily because anyone who is familiar with Android architecture and the changes done since Android Kitkat the OS has evolved sufficiently to make sure that user experience remains unaffected in the long run. The 'Boost' mode, in particular, does not provide any benefit and may indeed worsen the battery life and break cross-app operations. The company has even added a shortcut for the same labelled 'Power & Boost' which claims to 'Boost' your smartphone. Asus has added other apps like ZenTalk, Themes, Puffin, MyASUS Service Centre, ZenFone Care also in-house apps like Gallery, Contacts, File Manager, MiniMovie, PhotoCollage, Weather, Do It Later, Clock, Calculator, Flashlight, Share Link and WebStorage. One thing that I continue to love about the ZenUI is the option to turn off the screenshot notification in the settings menu. Performance 6 / 10 Asus ZenFone 3 Laser's performance was quite average, without any significant device freezing, lag or stuttering for the majority of the review. The experience turned rocky immediately after I ran any high-level benchmark apps where the entire system came to a crawl. I had to manually kill some benchmark apps to return to usable system conditions. I also regularly suffered from micro stutters while using the phone where the UI seemed sluggish while scrolling through long list of Google Play Store apps. It's not clear if Asus purposely included the slow animations to make sure that users don't detect the stuttering and slowness from the animations. Apart from the occasional micro-stutters, Snapdragon 430 coupled with 4GB RAM performed decently during all the tasks, music, gaming, web browsing and photo editing. But at these price points, you need to have a well-optimised software user experience. Asus needs to fix these issues in future updates. The smartphone scored 3481 in the PCMark 'Work performance benchmark along with scoring 642 in Single-Core and 2026 in Multi-Core benchmarks in Geekbench 4. Laser did decently and did not heat up considerably during extended gaming sessions and held admirably to heavy games like DeadTrigger 2, Modern Combat 5 and Gear Club. It scored 9398, 5569 and 9590 in IceStorm, IceStorm Extreme and IceStorm Unlimited benchmarks. The smartphone scores 22779 in Quadrant and 44525 in AnTuTu benchmark that I ran during my testing. The call quality of the ZenFone 3 Laser is decent with good clarity and volume of the sound. The audio quality of the speaker grill on the bottom side of the smartphone is decent with no surprises. However, the volume should have been more as in large halls or noisy rooms, the audio quality goes for a toss. Camera 6 / 10 ZenFone 3 Laser is supposed to be a camera-centric smartphone which should take decent if not great photos. But I am sad to report that the photos taken by the ZenFone 3 Laser are not great. The 13MP camera on the rear and the 8MP camera on the front are equally bad with most of the images full of noise in anything less than ideal lighting situations. Some turn to be a blurry mess in the auto mode. The camera like all the ZenUI running smartphones provides sufficient options regarding shooting modes ranging from Auto, ZenFlash, Manual, HDR Pro, Beautification, Super Resolution, Children, Low Light, QR Codes, Close-up among others. Asus needs to step up their camera game, and the camera needs to take better photos in anything less than perfect lighting conditions. One cannot name the smartphone 'Laser' to signify the Laser Autofocus system of the camera and then deliver such ordinary photos throughout. Battery 8 / 10 ZenFone 3 Laser performed great in the battery life department. During my extensive testing, the smartphone performed admirably well coping to my heavy usage. It lasted a little over 11 hours during my typical day which consists of always being connected to the internet through Wi-Fi, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp throughout the day in addition to 1 hour of music, 35-40 minutes of gaming and installing and testing new apps. However, two major things are missing in the offering are the USB Type-C port and fast charging. It is almost criminal for people to wait for more than two hours to wait for their smartphone being charged from 0 percent to 100 percent in 2016. I could not figure out what it was that was causing the PC Mark for Android battery life test benchmark to crash constantly. I tried running the test four times, but all the times PCMark would crash as the test reached 50 percent. Similarly to other ZenFones, the Mobile Manager has a "Power Saver" which gives us Performance, Normal, Power saving, Super saving and Customised power saving modes to improve the battery life. The smartphone also offers to reserve battery for calls, and you can set the conservation mode to kick in once the battery drops to a certain percentage. Even though the performance drops once the Power saving mode is activated, the fact remains that I would much rather use my smartphone in a reduced performance state rather than have a dead smartphone. Verdict and Price in India Asus ZenFone 3 Laser is a decent smartphone in the whole ZenFone 3 series. But despite the decent attempt at going with tried and tested way, there is no way that I would suggest this smartphone to anyone for the Rs 18,999. I would never pay this much money for a smartphone that has issues such as micro stutters and lags in operation, average camera and does not have essentials such as USB Type-C and fast charging in 2016. It is better that you look elsewhere like the Xiaomi Mi Max or you can get Xiaomi Mi5 with the exchange of your current smartphone. Looking at other smartphone offerings even Moto G4 Plus or Lenovo Zuk Z2 Plus is better than what Asus is offering here both in terms of performance as well as the value for money. Even if you are Asus loyalist, I would recommend you to save up and look for something else like Asus ZenFone 3 Ultra or ZenFone 3 Max or ZenFone 3. Find latest and upcoming tech gadgets online on Tech2 Gadgets. Get technology news, gadgets reviews & ratings. Popular gadgets including laptop, tablet and mobile specifications, features, prices, comparison. 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 Editors' Note This review has been updated to reflect changes to the ZenFone 3 Zoom's software since we reviewed it in May 2017. We've raised its score from to 4 stars. Better battery life is a spec most manufacturers ignore in the quest for thinner, lighter phones, but Asus is listening. The unlocked ZenFone 3 Zoom $329 packs a massive 5,000mAh cell into an attractive metal body, for some of the best battery life we've tested. You also get solid performance, dual cameras with optical zoom, and a host of unique features and customization options. It's an attractive option for the price, particularly if you're focused on battery life, but Motorola's Moto G5 Plus remains our Editors' Choice award for its simpler software experience and compatibility with all major US carriers. Design, Display, and Features The Zoom is proof that phones with big batteries needn't be bricks. Measuring by by inches HWD and ounces, the Zoom is slightly smaller than the iPhone 7 Plus by by inches, ounces and just a bit bigger than the Moto G5 Plus by by inches, ounces. That's a pretty impressive feat, considering the Zoom's battery is nearly twice as big as the ones in either of those devices. Similar Products The phone has a sleek metal body available in black pictured here, gold, and silver. The right side has a volume rocker and power button. The bottom features a headphone jack, a USB-C charging port, and a speaker. The left side has a SIM/microSD card slot and worked fine with a 256GB card. You can also use two SIM cards instead, but only one will connect to a 4G network. On the back you'll find the dual-camera setup with a laser autofocus sensor and dual-LED flash. A square fingerprint sensor below can be enabled for functions like tapping twice to quick launch the camera app, acting as the shutter key, and answering phone calls. Asus ZenFone 3 Zoom Review The Zoom has a 1,920-by-1,080 AMOLED display clad in Gorilla Glass 5. The resolution works out to a crisp 401 pixels per inch, matching the G5 Plus. The panel is rich and saturated out of the box, though you also have the ability to tweak color temperatures to your preference. The AMOLED panel not only provides inky blacks, but saves power by lighting pixels only as needed. Viewing angles are great, and using the phone outdoors is no problem, as it reaches up to 500 nits of brightness at maximum. Network Performance, Connectivity, and Audio The Zoom is available unlocked and supports GSM 850, 1800, 1900MHz, WCDMA 1/2/4/5/8, and LTE bands 1/2/3/4/5/7/8/17/28. That means you can only use it on GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile, and you'll likely get better connectivity on the former, since the phone is missing band 12, which provides better coverage and improved indoor reception on T-Mobile. That said, the phone performed fine throughout our testing in midtown Manhattan, showing a top download speed of on T-Mobile's network. Other connectivity protocols include Wi-Fi on the band and Bluetooth There's no NFC, which isn't unusual for this price range. Call quality is solid. Transmissions are clearly audible and have little to no garbling, though voices can sound a bit robotic. Noise cancellation is good at blotting out background noise, and with the loud earpiece volume, you shouldn't have trouble carrying on a conversation in a noisy environment. VoLTE is supported, Wi-Fi calling isn't. See How We Test Cell Phones Audio quality is also solid. Similar to the ZTE Axon 7, the Zoom supports high-resolution 24-bit audio playback through the headphone jack. Using a feature called Audio Wizard you can adjust music using the built-in equalizer and use DTS HeadphoneX virtual surround sound for movies, music, and games. Listening with a pair of high-fidelity Auros earphones, I was able to notice a significant improvement in clarity and sound quality compared with phones that don't have the same enhancements. Bass-heavy metal came through particularly well, with more clearly defined lyrics, less distortion, and a warmer sound. Virtual surround sound is subpar at best, however, actually worsening audio quality by narrowing the sound field. The bottom-firing mono speaker has an NXP Smart Amp. Aside from getting quite loud, I couldn't detect a difference between it and other downward-facing speakers. It's no match for the thunderous front-facing speakers on the Axon 7. Processor and Battery The Zoom is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor clocked at It's a capable midrange chipset, scoring 62,504 on the AnTuTu benchmark, which measures overall system performance. That's similar to the G5 Plus 63,845, which has the same processor, and higher than the Kirin 655-powered Honor 6X 56,602. The Axon 7 141,989 has a much more powerful Snapdragon 820 processor, but it's also more expensive. In terms of real-world performance, the ZenFone 3 Zoom is smooth. Its 3GB of RAM is enough that multitasking isn't a problem, and I never encountered any lag or stuttering. The phone also had no trouble handling high-end games like GTA San Andreas. Asus has packed the Zoom to the brim with software enhancements to improve performance. The most notable is Power & Boost, accessible through the notification shade. It's a memory manager that cleans up background apps when the screen is off, and can stop apps from automatically starting when you turn the phone on. The Zoom also has phenomenal battery life. It clocked 10 hours, 30 minutes in our rundown test, in which we stream full-screen video over LTE at maximum brightness. That outclasses all its competitors including the G5 Plus 7 hours, 35 minutes, the Axon 7 6 hours, and the Honor 6X 5 hours, 35 minutes. The only phone that comes close is the OnePlus 3T, at 10 hours. With average use, you can easily go two to three days without having to recharge. If there's one downside to the massive battery, it's that even with fast charging it'll still take a few hours to charge the Zoom. Camera Dual-camera phones are becoming increasingly more common, offering features like wide-angle shots in the case of the LG G6, bokeh on the Honor 6X, and telephoto zoom on the iPhone 7 Plus. With the Zoom you get a pair of rear-facing f/ 12-megapixel shooters capable of optical zoom, slightly higher than the 2x zoom on the 7 Plus. It also has a laser autofocus sensor, a dual-LED flash, and Dual Pixel Phase Detection Autofocus. In good light the phone takes crisp, detailed shots. Autofocus locks on quickly and noise is fairly minimal. Color reproduction is accurate, though perhaps a little dull if you prefer more saturated colors. In the camera app you'll find a number of modes and settings, including bokeh which blurs backgrounds to make objects stand out in the foreground, but the most notable is the optical zoom, which allows you to get in close on an object without the loss of detail that comes with digital zoom. It works well, as you can see in the images below, though overall quality isn't up to par with the iPhone 7 Plus—some of the pictures I shot on a cloudy day were a bit muddy. Despite claims from Asus that the phone has times the light sensitivity of the iPhone 7 Plus, it wasn't apparent in testing. The rear sensors took soft, noisy shots indoors, with overall subpar quality compared with flagships like the Google Pixel XL. That said, you can tweak ISO and shutter speed for better performance and a recent update has added an option for you to save pictures in RAW mode. The Zoom is capable of recording 4k video at 30fps, and 1080p at 60fps. There's no optical image stabilization, but the electronic image stabilization works fairly well and video quality is good. However, in a few instances, the camera app refused to record in 4k, generating an error message. The problem didn't crop up when attempting to record 1080p30. The 13-megapixel front-facing camera is excellent. Pictures are crisp, autoexposure has no issue adjusting to different lighting conditions, and backgrounds look clear. There's a built-in Skin Brightening slider enabled by default that can make your facial features look soft, but it's easy to turn off if you don't want to look like an airbrushed supermodel. Software The ZenFone 3 Zoom shipped running Android Marshmallow, but has since been updated to Android Nougat. While I was initially lukewarm in my feelings about the software experience, this update significantly redesigns the UI and wipes out all the bloatware that previously bogged the phone down. Everything feels a lot more responsive, though it's still far from stock Android. There's an altered lock screen, notification shade, and settings menu, though you no longer get an overwhelming array of toggles and menus when you pull down the notification shade. Other changes include Google Now and Google Assistant being integrated in the ZenUI launcher, sparing you from having to download extra apps. Other apps like Mobile Manager and Auto-Start Manager have been toned down so you don't get spammed with invasive notifications. A home screen manager appears when you swipe up from the app drawer. It allows you to edit every aspect of the phone's appearance including icon size, alignment, scroll effects, and font size. You can also download new themes, third-party icon packs, and change animation speed. Other useful settings include a call recorder baked into the Dialer app, Gloves mode to increase screen sensitivity, Outdoor mode to increase earpiece volume, Kids mode to restrict access to certain apps, more apps compatible with Split-screen mode, and Easy mode to launch a simplified UI. It's a nice degree of customization to have built right into the default launcher. You're left with out of 32GB of available storage, and you can add a microSD card if you need more. Conclusions The $329 ZenFone 3 Zoom sits between the $299 Moto G5 Plus and the $399 ZTE Axon 7 in terms of price. With its gargantuan battery, dual-camera setup with telephoto zoom, and host of unique features, it manages to stand out, which is more than you can say about many phones in the price range. And with its recent update to Android Nougat, the software experience is far better than it was at the beginning. That said, the G5 Plus remains our Editors' Choice on the more affordable end It features similar hardware and compatibility with every major US carrier. For $100 more, ZTE's Axon 7 is nearly a year old, but it too received a Nougat update with Daydream support, putting it nearly on par with current flagship phones for nearly half the price. Like What You're Reading? Sign up for Fully Mobilized newsletter to get our top mobile tech stories delivered right to your inbox. This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links. Subscribing to a newsletter indicates your consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.

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