Asus Zenfone 5 the New Benchmark in Budget Smartphones, This Phone Promises to Sweep Competition Off Their Feet — Rohit Arora
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REVIEW SMARTPHONE AsUS ZENFONE 5 The new benchmark in budget smartphones, this phone promises to sweep competition off their feet — Rohit Arora 014 can well be named as the Year of while with extensive usage that includes playing Budget Smartphones, with so many with all available options, I had to switch it off to 2smartphone vendors introducing use it again; but this might be peculiar to the unit powerful smartphones at really compelling I received. prices. The smartphone market is already Performance: Zenfone 5 comes with a flooded with affordable smartphones like dual-core Intel atom Z2560 processor clocked at Moto G, Lumia 630, Intex Aqua i5, etc and 1.6GHz. It is dual-core on sheets however Intel’s it’s a daunting task for a manufacturer to Hyperthreading technology makes it perform establish itself in this segment. like a quad-core CPU by enabling the intellegent Asus Zenfone series is the latest entry in scheduling of processes it runs. The processor Indian smartphone market with 4, 4.5, 5 and performed better than MediaTek’s chipsets as 6 inch variants, and that too with an attrac- there was no such lags and not a bit of heating tive price point of Rs 5,999 onwards for Indian while mutitasking. The benchmarks results are consumers who love a pocket friendly feature also decidely better than Moto G and Micromax rich phone. Canvas Turbo Mini. Moreover the presence of Attractive design and sharp display: 2GB RAM adds buttery smooothness to the over- Zenfone 5 comes with a mesmerising design all user experience and makes Zenfone 5 stands that clearly impresses at the very first glance. tall against its rivals. There is an 8GB on board The power and volume buttons are placed on storage that is further expanadable up-to 32GB. right and offer good tactile feedback. The matte The 2110 mAh battery gave us four hours finish removable back panel makes the phone back-up during our video playback test on Wi-Fi feel good to hold. Even as the Zenfone5 has at full brightness. In day to day usage it lasted a removable back panel, its battery is packed for 7.5 hours with a single charge on a fair usage Price: `9,999 under a thin layer of plastic which houses dual- of applications, music and browsing at Wi-Fi or SIM slots. The phone boasts a 5 inch HD display 3G, which can be a concern. There is a battery that is sharp, produces vibrant colours and is saving mode on the phone but that’s not so good for watching HD videos. It is sensitive and effective.battery life is a concern on Zenfone 5 even supports ‘Glove Mode’. as it lasted for 7.5 hours with a single charge on KEY SPECS: Customised OS: The new ZenUI interface over a fair usage of applications, music and browsing 5 inch HD display, the Android 4.3 Jellybean is an important aspect at Wi-Fi or 3G. There is a battery saving mode on 1.6 GHz Intel Atom Z2560 CPU, of Zenfone series. ZenUI follows the flat icons ap- the phone but that’s also not so effective. All of 2 GB RAM, 8 MP rear camera, proach and comes loaded with Asus tweaks like this makes Zenfone 5 not a serious contender in 2 MP front camera, Do it later, Asus links, reading mode, power saving this department. 2110 mAh battery mode, Miracast and also an Easy mode that has 35000 big icons for senior citizens. You swipe down from 3656 30000 5587 PROS: left to check your recent notifications and from 1589 right for quick settings. The UI is refreshing and 1254 2964 Feature-rich camera, 25000 8276 3Dmark Ice Storm 1939 Refreshing UI and stylish looks Smooth the best I have seen in a long time on any Android 20000 5817 Vellamo HTML5 Multitasking performance device. Sadly it runs on Android 4.3 Jellybean but 8784 Asus has promised that an update of Android 4.4 15000 Quadrant Kitkat is coming soon. 19702 CONS: Good camera: The camera on the Zenfone 10000 16830 Antutu 16905 Non removable battery, series is equipped with Pixelmaster technology 5000 Android 4.3 Mediocre battery back-up that improves light sensitivity by combining 0 Moto G Micromax Canvas Asus pixels together which results in better imaging Turbo Mini Zenfone 5 performance even in low light conditions. There WRITE TO: is HDR, miniature effect, GIF, low light, one Bottomline: With an Intel atom processor, Asus India, Mumbai touch lightening and all other possible tweaks good hardware, new ZenUI and a feature rich Ph: 022-61598612 for camera enthusiasts. I tested the camera to camera Zenfone 5 is a good buy at an attrac- Email: [email protected] its limits and in a week’s usage it hanged once tive price of Rs 9,999. PRICE PERFORMANCE Features OVERALL 68 PCQUEST AUGUST 2014 pcquest.com twitter.com/pcquest facebook.com/pcquest linkd.in/pcquest [email protected].