Gadgetory

when you think about high-end affordable smartphones I'm willing to bet that Asus isn't the first brand that comes to your mind they're looking to change that with a high-end device at an affordable price I'm our percent over TechnoBuffalo and let's see if we can find some nirvana with the zenfone 2 as usual just want to take a quick second to let you know that I reviewed the zenfone 2 over a period of eight nice long days Oasis clearly takes a ton of pride in the build quality of the zenfone 2 and with good reason this thing is a delight to hold in the hand it feels strong it's got like a bit of heft and the curved back really kind of makes it just like nestled right into your hand not only that but the curve on the back isn't so severe that it can't be comfortably used when it's laying flat which is a really nice pleasant surprise despite the back actually being plastic it actually has no flex at all whatsoever it doesn't push in even a little bit and it feels really kind of wonderful and grippy thanks to this sort of weird brushed aluminum finish that they're actually very proud of as well now asus isn't the first oh em to put the volume rocker on the back but it works really really nicely here it frees up the size of the device to taper off for a nice thinner edge and it really feels like the kind of phone that because of that heft that like Iron Man would use and I'm not just saying that because of the bright red back that I happened to have here you remember the like original Droid that they like og droid the very first one on Verizon remember how badass that one felt you would slide it up you had that sweet keyboard it felt like it had heft it felt like a tank felt like it had punched to it that's kind of how this feels that's here it feels like a really strong sturdy device it feels like everything on the inside is packed tightly together and I like that those backs are changeable and that's also where you're gonna get access to the dual micro SIM slots and the micro SD slot is gonna be right underneath that back and you can also see the battery but that 3000 milliamp power pack is not removable around the front you're gonna find your hardware and app buttons down at the bottom and your wide-angle front facing camera which is really really cool we'll get that the camera area down here on the bottom the other thing I wanted to know is this is something that they seemed very proud of and that I kind of like a lot there's this kind of radial design on the chin down here and it kind of makes a little scratchy noise when you touch it's kind of ridged it's a really nice looking feeling device I feel really happy when I hold it it's a nice phone it does have dual SIM slots so if that's something that you need that's there for you but it does not have anything in terms of biometrics so if you're looking for something with a fingerprint scanner you're gonna need to keep looking but it does have NFC my only major complaint with the build quality / hardware is something in this interferes with the Wi-Fi connectivity it had a really hard time staying connected to the networks that my Nexus 6 had no problem staying in range of all right so let's talk about the brains of the operation there are two models of the zenfone 2 the 200 dollar model sports an Intel Atom quad-core Z 35 60 clocked at 1.8 gigahertz in fact like I said it's a quad-core processor and that one comes with two gigs of RAM this is the $300 model that we tested and this one is running the Atom quad-core z3580 clocked at 2.3 gigahertz at 4 gigs of ram that's right for 4 gigs of ram this model has 64 gigs of on-board storage for that same price point and if you notice there is a micro SD card under that backplate so you can expand that up to 128 gigs if you know me well enough you know that I'm not a spec fiend I'm not the guy who's gonna just write a phone off because it gets lower in - to benchmark points we're at the point in tech we're just having that highest clocked processor is really just part of the equation the Intel silicon that's in this thing is a very strong contender it certainly doesn't score as high on those benchmarks as the modern flagships do in fact it lands somewhere around last year's flagships on the benchmarks but in practical everyday use I didn't experience a single jerk I didn't experience a single stutter I didn't experience a single slowdown I'm sure the four gigs of ram doesn't hurt at all but the only major hiccup that I encountered was a random reboot that I got after the device got to think a little bit hotter than I think it would have liked overall performance was great so through multitasking video watching downloads emails photos never had a problem tackling anything that I threw at it the screen is a 5.5 inch 1080p IPS LCD display and it's great it's not the best thing that I've ever seen but it's super smooth the pixels are indistinguishable and it's got great strong color reproduction but let's say you don't like the color reproduction the best part about the screen is actually a bit of the software they give you an app they call it splendid to make the screen look exactly the way that you want it to look I like my screens to lean a little bit cooler than the warmer side at the end of the spectrum so I really like to have that option and I also like my colors just a little bit oversaturated not not crazy high not too too much but the app lets me tweak it to exactly where I want it if I want to it's got some presets but I can I can just switch the slider up and say hey I want it cooler the only thing I wish the app had that it doesn't is a contrast slider but that's kind of being picky at this point I mean they even give you color bars so that you can help tweak it to your heart's content like I said it's not the best screen that I've ever seen but it's no slouch and it's really about as good as you can expect to get at this price point and that's not bad the rear facing camera is a 13 megapixel shooter and the front facing is a 5 megapixel wide-angle lens that's important to note the optics are really really impressive here and they've got a plethora of software features that are actually kind of helpful in the camera app I've got some really really great shots in all kinds of lighting scenarios the low light mode in fact even does a great decent job of lighting up an otherwise murky photo the HDR was a little bit too bit aggressive for my taste and a lot of the camp your features in here are definitely a little bit much for example the beautification mode which you get on the front-facing camera it's on by default and it's just it's way too much if it smooths your skin makes everything feel like Photoshop right out of the gate but the wide-angle lens is delightful it just you can fit so much stuff you get used to holding your phone out here you don't need to do that with this phone and it reminds me a lot of the front-facing camera on the s6 which is a great front-facing camera overall I'm really really happy with the quality of the photos that I'm getting from the zenfone 2 despite some over processing at times whether you're in HDR or beautification or not at first the 3000 milliamp hour battery was actually really impressive I was getting like two and a half hours to two and a quarter hours of screen on time during a full day of moderate usage but it did slip really really hard on one day in particular I tested this on 18 T's 4G network so while I was driving around California navigating in the car doing a lot of internet browsing posting a lot of photos to Instagram the better your life just tanked you know it was just ahead one of those heavy phone days and I took a look at the battery stats and I thought maybe I was just using it a little bit too much but I actually did find that underneath there wasn't the screen it was Android OS it was going haywire this is running Android 5.0 so there are probably a handful of leaks that are still in there that haven't been taken care of I'm a little disappointed to see that but that does lead me into the software well there are some really great ideas and implementations here Asus needs to take a deep breath and take a step back everything here is skinned there's an outrageous amount of bloatware on this device though I do commend Asus for breaking out most of their apps into their own entries into the Play Store which is nice as that makes for much quicker updates it's just that there's way too much on here man for the average user there's way too many icons that really wind up just being useless and the skins of apps that are already included in stock Android don't add anything to the user experience the note-taking app for example it's ridiculous I have no idea why they would spend any amount of time making a note-taking app that allows you to type as if you're using graffiti on a Palm Pilot I just I genuinely have no idea it doesn't make any sense to me it's painful to use and at least me wondering if that time wouldn't have been better spent polishing details elsewhere then of course there's the Asus exclusive social network is Zen circle which I'm not even going to touch of course Asus has made sure that none of these apps can be disabled either so if you're not interested in there's no way to get rid of them at least they did have the decency to have the ability to hide apps in their native launcher which I guess this is about as good as I can ask for speaking of that launcher I really like to try and use devices as I would use them if I owned them so usually I immediately install nova launcher and get things looking and behaving the way that i like them and then i go from there but for reviews like this one where the launcher really kind of does have a feel in and of itself I do think it's worth giving that launcher a fair shake because not everyone who gets a device goes straight to Nova Launcher so while the Asus launcher is definitely not my cup of tea it is definitely one of the least offensive launchers on an android scheme that i've seen in a while the icons and folders they're a little bit big for my taste and some of the UI elements definitely come across as gaudy but it's a perfectly serviceable launcher with its own set of handy features like smart grouping and even the ability to modify the grid size which is nice now all that said there is some seriously convenient stuff in here and I've actually really gotten used to a lot of these helpful little features here are just a few of them that I've been using a ton double tap to wake on the screen great you can draw a C for a camera or an S for hangouts actually you can assign any shortcut you want to the letters that you can write on the screen which is really really helpful and then there's the handful of apps where Asus is attention to detail really comes through and you wind up with something that you don't expect to have on your phone but they really kind of go above and beyond for example the flashlight on this thing is absurdly useful like you don't expect to get something this useful on this kind of a device but it gives you a normal flashlight with the quick settings in your notification pane it gives you a flash interval setting so you can go all the way up to a strobe flash and the coolest part is there's an actually an SOS button so if you find yourself you're camping whatever it is you find yourself stuck on the side of the road you can hit the SOS button and it'll flash SOS in Morse code and that's just the kind of little bit of attention to detail that I think makes me feel like aces can make something really and truly great if they really just kind of take a step back and exercise a little bit more restraint than they have look this is a great phone it's a great great phone and I think Asus is onto something here they really do seem to care about what they're creating if I had to give them some feedback I just say dial back the amount of customization you're dumping on Android you don't need to add apps unless the apps really add something to the experience these modifications that you're doing the Android really either need to improve on an experience or offer one that just isn't available in stock Android for example the Asus calendar doesn't offer anything that Google Calendar doesn't offer stop worrying about making all of Android look like you made it and start focusing on improving it and maybe the zenfone 3 will be able to tango with the big boys next year all that said I can still very much recommend the zenfone 2 to anyone looking for a value device in the same vein as the oneplus 2 but who doesn't want to give up something like NFC if you don't mind a less than stock Android experience the zenfone 2 is a great phone to consider especially given the price point but what do you guys think is the zenfone seriously something that you would consider buying giving what you know now let us know in the comments and hey be nice to each other down there just because you're on the internet doesn't mean that you can act like a jerk we all love tech here so fanboys are not we can't wait for the future collectively okay so be nice all right you know the drill guys like subscribe all that fun stuff thank you for watching and I will see you guys in the next video