Gadgetory

a Seuss can sometimes be a bit of a dark horse in our phone coverage but this review was something of a homecoming for me one of my first reviews for this channel and our very first real camera review was on the original zenfone zoom trading a moving lens for a more current dual camera setup is this a better solution to get you closer to your subject how does the rest of the phone compared to the competition Asus zenfone 3 zoom here's our full review I always like to start off with design as we look at various phones incorporating similar features a 5.5 inch display dual cameras are rounded rectangular aesthetic there are only so many ways we can assemble these pieces Asus manages to walk a fine line between derivative design and maintaining some sense of formers and phone aesthetics the rear fingerprint sensor nicely centered the flash and focus assist organized in a unique way it's a nicely built device though it won't win over any bezel heaters for the capacitive chin controls and border around the screen our navy black review unit is an interesting color option though mostly black hints of blue subtle company branding it's a nice looking phone but it's unlikely to turn many heads the tech inside also might be a bit controversial in our comments it's another phone released in 2017 using the Qualcomm six-to-five chipset released late last year this might bother some folks but the updated chip for this tier was announced back in May and there are only early rumors pointing to which phones might start shipping with a snapdragon 630 the 6:25 still delivers a terrific balance between horsepower and fuel efficiency and in daily use it's a plenty capable chipset for getting your work done the unlocked USA version comes with three gigabytes of RAM and 32 gigabytes of storage normal if uninspired specs for a phone in this price bracket everything here is good like the 1080p AMOLED display which has great contrast nice saturation and respectable outdoor brightness all things we've come to expect but nothing which truly redefines this experience or this tier of the market that story continues with software as we get another iteration of the asus zenui i skin happily this is still organized more like Android than some manufacturers which try to ape iOS where this is one of the heavier skins for changing up the look of a phone it's completely serviceable I don't hate it I do have to look for things more often simply for it being different but everything is pretty much here one of my nitpicky er gripes are these kinds of additional notifications we have a solution for this in the notification shade so docking this at the bottom of the screen is different just for the sake of being different and it kind of makes the phone feel naggy we are happy to see some updates though we're reviewing this phone now largely because of the update to nougat which includes enhanced functionality for the camera that's a long lead time from the phone's original announcement back in January but we're hoping this means a soos will at least keep up with security patches we've got a current operating system on a 1080p display and on a mid-range chipset so this performs about how we would expect it to this is another piece of evidence pointing to how even mid-range hardware is pretty much good enough users are unlikely to see significant stumbles and daily interactions covering the basics interacting on social media this is a solid combo as we've showcased on other phones you're going to be fine until you start taxing the zenfone with more graphics intense gaming now moving to one of the signature features of this phone dual rear shooters the main camera pairs Hardware stabilization with a fast aperture when looking at zoom sensor phones this is a capable option but one still facing some teething pains photos are nicely exposed with even-handed color saturation though maybe a touch heavy on the sharpening white balance err slightly on the cool side but we're still playing nicely with warm California afternoon light HDR is just another brightness mode and even in daylight it's not difficult to get some ghosting from minor handshake as the phone stitches together multiple exposures low-light shots are tricky to pin down between various auto and HDR modes but if you can hold steady for just a second to let the processing do its trick you can achieve some wonderfully clean photos the second sensor also allows for a software depth of field blur like the iPhone using the zoom sensor for the main portrait but I am happy to see some control / this effect dialing in how much blur you want like a proper camera's aperture the zenfone produces fairly nice UHD video in daylight that Hardware stabilization really comes in handy smoothing out handshake but the zoom sensor gets a bit funky the zenfone won't switch sensors while filming if you start on the main sensor and zoom it'll just continue to crop the main sensor the zoom sensor doesn't have any stabilization when shooting UHD so maybe it's better to only use it when you really need it the overall app layout is fine if a bit disorganized photography settings and one menu lumped in with app control settings a separate menu for different shooting modes everything is here it's just really busy and the user needs to take time to memorize how to get around if you want exposure control when shooting video first open the manual camera mode then shoot video and then you can adjust the exposure unfortunately there are still a ton of gremlins in the software we got some funky creepy image degradation when shooting raw like this image see those lens flares that comes from the tunnel shot we usually test in low-light the phone stacked an image shot minutes before I'm still not entirely sure how that happened the camera also uses one of my biggest pet peeves when shooting video variable frame rate at night we saw framerate drop to as low as 10 frames per second which produces an intolerable slideshow even during bright day shots occasionally the metering would cause the framerate to drop like here at 20 frames per second we used to drop the frame rate so each frame could be longer and each frame can then soak up more light there's really no need to do this anymore the zenfone has a large sensor with large pixels a large aperture and Hardware stabilization instead this makes it really difficult to predict what the camera might do and this footage is extremely unreliable especially if you ever need to combine clips or edit this is very disappointing now taking a listen to the audio playback the mono bottom firing speaker is perfectly acceptable for daily interactions nice clarity and just a touch wider than say an LG g6 headphone playback is also mid-pack the zenfone does seem capable of properly playing 32-bit audio files we're seeing more distortion at the high end of the frequency spectrum overall quality numbers for noise and dynamic range are in line with other mid-range errs though still a touch lower than we'd like to see the amp on board is decently loud however so driving headphones with some mp3's should be right in this phone's wheelhouse and what do you get when you have a 1080p display with a low powered chipset and a monster-sized battery epic grunt are you're looking at the undisputed champ of our media bench besting even the iPhone 7 plus in percentage of battery use this easily accomplishes multi-day use like other 625 phones we've reviewed we're seeing two horrific run time in the zenfone made it through a three-day weekend with juice to spare recharge numbers don't look particularly impressive but a half-hour stint on the included charger should easily juice you up enough for a day so let's wrap this up where does that leave us with the Asus zenfone 3 zoom the major issue faced when reviewing Asus hardware it's always good I really don't see any major deal-breakers here I liked using the phone the battery life is epic and the cameras well are an improvement over its predecessor even for some of the issues we faced this is all progress after using the phone for a week though I still have to confess that I miss some of the wow factor some difficulty in really pinning down who I know would be the right fit for this device there are a ton of good solutions near this price point more powerful phones or better audio or more unique features the takeaway here I suppose while using the phone might not be the most exciting there really aren't many phones available in North America with this kind of stamina for the price that's the Wow not the signature feature alluded to in the phone's name but battery for days as always thanks so much for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel and hit that Bell icon for more reviews like these and help us out with some sharing on your favorite social networks for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos now some gadget guy on Twitter and Instagram and I will catch you all on the next review