anyone have the zenfone 2 for over a week what is your impression of it ?
- Thread starter kissdafloor
- Start date
I've had a 4GB/64GB Unit for about 2 weeks now. I'm not one of the official reviewers for AC, but here are my thoughts so far:
Ergonomics - Pretty good for a 5.5 inch phone. certainly easier to handle than my Galaxy Note 4 that I used to have, and the ASUS does have the nifty one-hand mode that shrinks the screen and moves it to the side, which is handy. I like the volume on the back as well. Power button is hard to press and hard to use on the top, but tap to wake/sleep works well so no biggie.
Performance - Flawless, in practice. Really fast. No stutters, pauses, crashes, redraws. Just gets it done, multitasking, games, whatever. zero complaints at all here. Screen has good brightness and resolution, sound quality is very good from headphones, adequate from speaker. No issues at all with heat, signal reception, voice quality, etc.
UI - I really REALLY like ZenUI, and a lot of the apps/features that come with it. Reminds me of HTC Sense in that there are a lot of logical improvements to Android, without feeling like unnecessary bloatware. Things like What's Next, Save for Later, and PC Link are genuine value adds.
Camera - been lots of discussion here. I've done a lot of testing, and here's the real deal. the camera defaults are terrible...the image optimization is a horrid mess that turns good pictures into impressionist paintings, and for some reason the default is also "standard" image quality, rather than "fine". I have no idea why that's even a choice, but there you go. Once you turn off image optimization, and change quality to Fine, the camera is really good. It does not have OIS, which is to be expected at this price point, but the dynamic range is adequate and the color balance is very good. With the image optimization completely off, resolved detail is extremely high, which is a good thing...but you will also see a bit more "noise", or grain, than you're used to seeing from other cameras that apply just a little noise reduction. The ASUS camera does give you the option to do that, I just have decided I'd rather go with a bit of noise and better resolved detail.
Video is quite another story. While the camera does do 1080p video, the quality is middling at best. Without OIS, there is quite a bit of shaking, and the image stabilization is mediocre. Also, the image stabilization only works for 720p video.
Battery - the battery situation is basically ok. Standby is fine...I lose less than 2% battery per hour during standby, and that's with an exchange account, an outlook account, and three Gmail accounts syncing at all times, along with high accuracy location and google now enabled. Screen-on battery is a bit higher than ideal...in regular use, expect about 4 hours, not much more. However, since the quick charger is...quick, I haven't found this to be a big problem.
My only frustration at the moment is that the phone is still on 5.0, rather than 5.0.2. That means smartlock is still busted for certain exchange accounts (like mine) that mandate at PIN code. This is a Google problem, not an ASUS problem.
Hope that helps...
Ergonomics - Pretty good for a 5.5 inch phone. certainly easier to handle than my Galaxy Note 4 that I used to have, and the ASUS does have the nifty one-hand mode that shrinks the screen and moves it to the side, which is handy. I like the volume on the back as well. Power button is hard to press and hard to use on the top, but tap to wake/sleep works well so no biggie.
Performance - Flawless, in practice. Really fast. No stutters, pauses, crashes, redraws. Just gets it done, multitasking, games, whatever. zero complaints at all here. Screen has good brightness and resolution, sound quality is very good from headphones, adequate from speaker. No issues at all with heat, signal reception, voice quality, etc.
UI - I really REALLY like ZenUI, and a lot of the apps/features that come with it. Reminds me of HTC Sense in that there are a lot of logical improvements to Android, without feeling like unnecessary bloatware. Things like What's Next, Save for Later, and PC Link are genuine value adds.
Camera - been lots of discussion here. I've done a lot of testing, and here's the real deal. the camera defaults are terrible...the image optimization is a horrid mess that turns good pictures into impressionist paintings, and for some reason the default is also "standard" image quality, rather than "fine". I have no idea why that's even a choice, but there you go. Once you turn off image optimization, and change quality to Fine, the camera is really good. It does not have OIS, which is to be expected at this price point, but the dynamic range is adequate and the color balance is very good. With the image optimization completely off, resolved detail is extremely high, which is a good thing...but you will also see a bit more "noise", or grain, than you're used to seeing from other cameras that apply just a little noise reduction. The ASUS camera does give you the option to do that, I just have decided I'd rather go with a bit of noise and better resolved detail.
Video is quite another story. While the camera does do 1080p video, the quality is middling at best. Without OIS, there is quite a bit of shaking, and the image stabilization is mediocre. Also, the image stabilization only works for 720p video.
Battery - the battery situation is basically ok. Standby is fine...I lose less than 2% battery per hour during standby, and that's with an exchange account, an outlook account, and three Gmail accounts syncing at all times, along with high accuracy location and google now enabled. Screen-on battery is a bit higher than ideal...in regular use, expect about 4 hours, not much more. However, since the quick charger is...quick, I haven't found this to be a big problem.
My only frustration at the moment is that the phone is still on 5.0, rather than 5.0.2. That means smartlock is still busted for certain exchange accounts (like mine) that mandate at PIN code. This is a Google problem, not an ASUS problem.
Hope that helps...
AceofZeroz
Member
Flawless review, you definitely expressed everything in a fair, organized and logical manner.
Sent from the Ace's Tapatalk 4
Yeah very good review. I haven't had mine for a week but so far most of what I wanted to say you have covered
yeah i do used it probably for 2 weeks but i am not too impressed with it.. it operates pretty slow and if you load some applications simultaneously than it hangs and then you probably need to restart it again.. best for users who uses smartphones slowly and steadily..
.... and we have our first troll! Welcome to the board, Patel_Rosh!
Posted via the Android Central App
Ok here is my review so far of the Zenfone 2. I don't know if many are interested in my model but I will do the review anyways. I got the ZE550ML off of ebay. This is the model with the lower 1.8 processor, 2GB of RAM 16GB storage. There is also no NFC. So this is definitely the lowest end model of the 5.5". For me though I decided to trade the high end for hopefully what would be more battery life. 720p screen on a 5.5" phone is more than acceptable for me. Before this I have had a nexus 4 and then most recently a Nexus 5. I really liked the 4 but I would consider myself a pretty heavy user so the Nexus 5 didn't work for me since I would be charging the thing in early afternoon, so it wouldn't even give me close to a day. I also needed a dual sim phone so this fit perfectly.I will try not to repeat what quantify said (sorry if I do) in his review because he did a great review and covered a lot. I would imagine that the 4gb version is faster but I have had no problems at all with this version. It's very quick and responds well. I have had a few apps close out but I believe that is on the developers end and not an Asus problem.
Asus's Zenui was tough to get used to but the more I saw and got used to the features the more I have enjoyed using it. The settings that are available are great and they greatly improve the android experience.
The build quality of this phone is really impressive. In no way does it feel like a mid end device. I thought it was very heavy compared to my nexus 5 but now I don't even notice it and don't mind the heaviness at all. One of my friends couldn't believe it wasn't a high end device. As you can see in the picture I got the white version, which I thought they were going to make it look like the etched metal plastic version but they didn't and instead it has a nice feeling matte material. The only problem with this is that it is very slippery! I am being very careful and can't wait till my case arrives. The volume buttons are great where the are and as everyone else has said the power button is in a stupid position, but double tap to wake is good and you get used to its position after awhile and don't think about it.
I couldn't be happier with the implementation of the dual sims and love not carrying around two phones with me.
So now for Battery. Now I don't really know what is considered great because my nexus 5 was in between 3-4h of SOT, which I think is aweful. So this phone has been very good. It has consistently gotten better with each charge and since I am still only a week into using it I think it will still get better. I am only on 3g since I need to upgrade my sim card but I will post again when I get LTE on it to see if it's any different. I had to charge the phone this mourning so this is the last screen shot I could take, but I think I could easily get to 7 hours of SOT in the future.
That's about it. Overall I am very happy with my purchase and hopefully I won't have to upgrade for 2 years. If it does last I would for sure give my money to Asus again.
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I believe the ZE550ML has quick charge capabilities, but it doesn't come with a charger. If you bought a quick charge charger (I believe Quick Charge 2.0 chargers are compatible) you should be able to get that feature.
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I think the latest update made some major improvements to the image optimization settings, even though that was not in the changelog. I've been doing more low-light and daylight comparisons vs. my HTC Desire EYE, and I can now confidently say that the Zf2 takes better photos with image optimization ON, and image stabilization ON, than the HTC. big change from a week ago. I'll post some examples in the photo section.
Oh I'm so glad you let me know because when I looked over the specs page I didn't see it, but your right. That's great news actually. I will have to look into getting one. If anyone knows of a decent one for a good price let me know.
I'll edit my post to
So you haven't changed any settings and just have it on Auto? I know its a good camera but haven't been impressed because every photo comes out slightly blurry, so I figured it was something to do with autofocus
I bought the 64gb / 4Gb ram version from a trusted ebay seller in Taiwan, is it safe to say this is the international version?
Jdane07
Well-known member
Probably, but did you check the LTE bands and everything before purchasing?
Posted via the Android Central App
i didnt
You want to make sure the fdd-lte bands include 2 and 4. The Taiwan versions have this, it's what I'm using.
Posted via the Android Central App
Correct. Just using auto, image optimization on auto, image stabilization on auto, and image quality on fine. It's not the best camera I've used but it's perfectly serviceable under most conditions.
Posted via the Android Central App
mstrblueskys
Q&A Team
As far as we've heard, Google hasn't green-lighted Asus in the US yet, so almost definitely international.
jpr
Well-known member
It could be TW, WW, or CN/IN. If it is a new phone that has not had the firmware altered, you can check in your about device settings to see which of those codes is in your build number. (I'm assuming it's in the build number since I don't have a phone yet to verify but it should be in one of the fields there if not).
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