Mrblueskys... you and I have the same taste in phones. We both have and love the HTC Desire EYE. So, let me tell you a bit about the zf2 in that context.
Physically, the zf2 is only slightly larger than the EYE, but it's much heavier and doesn't feel quite as premium. They both share an oddly mushy yet hard to press power button. I have come to appreciate the rear mounted volume controls, however. The tap to wake and Zen motion gestures to launch applications are also really cool, but I've had to disable them because they occasionally launched while in my pocket.
The software reminds me very much of sense in both function and logic. One of the brilliant things about sense is that it includes really useful upgrades to the stock android experience. ZenUI is like that, but even better, frankly. Sense does a great job with power management, showing which apps drained the battery over specific time periods. ZenUI goes much farther in both reporting and function, allowing the user to disable background usage and wake locks app by app, for example. I really find the entire ZenUI experience very polished and useful, and switching back to the EYE or my z3 compact seems like a downgrade.
Performance on the zf2 is just beastly. While the EYE is certainly great and never left me wanting, the zf2 can multitask completely effortlessly, with no stuttering, pauses, redraws, or whatnot. Scrolling in chrome is perfectly smooth always. The camera launches immediately. Swiping on the keyboard never lags or decides to occasionally miss a trace.
One of the reasons I love the EYE is for the rear camera. The selfie camera was never a draw for me... but the imx214 sensor, coupled with a two tone flash and fantastic camera software, is a great combination. The zf2 is actually better. Low light we know about. The real power of the zf2 camera is in software that is more powerful yet easier to use, combined with even better image processing. The first thing you have to do though is TURN OFF THE DAMN IMAGE OPTIMIZATION in camera settings. The stock settings make every picture look like an impressionist painting. Yecch. You may want to do manual optimization mode, and turn up saturation a smidge, but that's your call.
Once that's done, you'll find the pictures to be excellent. Good colour, dynamic range, and well controlled noise. ZenUI expands on the excellent EYE experience in a few ways. The first is with useful image stabilization. This is followed with a neato ability to long press in the viewfinder and lock focus and exposure. Finally, the software is smart enough to recognize when HDR works be useful, and unobtrusively provide a direct link on the viewfinder. The HDR works very well, and the overlay shows few haloes and no loss of detail.
Battery. Not great, probably not as good as the EYE, but I'm finding perfectly livable. The quick charge capability helps. No worse than my wife's Moto X 2nd gen.
Hope that helps. Looking forward to your thoughts as well.
Posted via the Android Central App
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