Gadgetory

so I've got a special package here possibly an exclusive in early unboxing it's the zenfone 5 and it's actually my very first look at the zenfone series you might be surprised at what this thing packs in at the mid-range price point now you can see on the side of the box we love photo so you can probably guess there's gonna be an emphasis on camera to a certain extent in here so what do we have here we have sim tool a case is included you gotta love the free case now look it's that device so this is kind of like a bluish tone to it it shimmers around this focal point where the fingerprint sensor is up here in the top corner you see the dual lens setup which is implemented a little differently than other manufacturers I'll tell you more about that in a moment this is the front of the device and once I boot this up you're gonna be able to see we have a new member to the notch family although in this case a slightly smaller notch than on the iPhone 10 before I boot it up though let's look around the device you see there's still a headphone jack I'm happy to see it manufacturers hold on to it there are some very nice headphones they use that Jack speaker as well volume rocker the power switch on the right hand side and then the SIM tray over here on the left and you'll see you have expandable storage as well also inside the package we have a quick charger a headset with an in-ear style which I always like to see and get the right fit you have some extra ear tips as well many manufacturers aren't including headsets at all anymore so this is good to see also type C cable to keep it all charged up okay let's power up the device here now since I'm filming this just before the announcement price is not exactly official this thing is gonna compete in the same territory as something like the 1 + 5 t now there's gonna be different versions of the zenfone 5 there's gonna be the 5 the 5 Z and the 5 light this one is right in the middle of the three I can speculate a little bit here I think this is gonna slot into the mid-range and I think it's gonna represent some pretty decent value so there you get your first look at the notch cut out we can thank Apple of course bringing on this trend but at least it shrunk down a little bit in this case surprisingly this is a 6.2 inch display it's very easy hold on - but of course when you're watching video and whatnot you have to get used to that not sitting up there now I do want to test out the fingerprint reader as well fingerprint on the back all right so I mean that's doing the job I'm still a fan of fingerprint sensors at this point you guys heard my whole rant on face ID face unlock in general I don't mind the face unlock on the 1 + 5 t because it's fast even there I end up using the fingerprint as well it's kind of a thing where you're like you're already unlocking it before you even look at it right like face IDs not gonna see me from there it's a bit of a physical adjustment I also just don't like the swipe up gesture from below because for me that's a two-stage thing if there's a bit of an adjustment here and Dennis white the whole thing could have been over a long time before that with the fingerprint you know without bowing to your device anyway people are talking now about the under display fingerprint reader all these various vivo devices like maybe that's the future I don't know those don't seem to be as quick as the traditional capacitive ones on the back or wherever else they happen to be so ok now something to keep in mind this is a prototype like it's it's a pre-release version even though it's in the retail box and whatnot because of that it can't really evaluate it yet this is by no means a review at this point in the meantime one of the things I'm excited about on this particular device is the camera implementation and the reason for that is because they've done something similar to LG where they opted to use the second lens as a wide-angle lens as opposed to just contributing to portrait data for depth of field or low-light performance and you can see that's represented at the bottom here by these indicators you got the one mountain or the three mountain to get the the wider angle perspective I'm gonna show will what I'm talking about there we have the stock main camera and if I switch over to wide I mean you can already see my knuckles in the corner here being picked up by the lens so that's just how wide it is maybe a better demo of this is if I use it on myself here so you can imagine I mean I could get like one more person in the frame here put on the wide-angle I got here like two people over I just really like wide-angle cameras it's a nice implementation so it looks like the wide sensor is an 8 megapixel sensor and when I switch to the main camera she had switches to 12 megapixels so that's something to keep in mind okay so wide has no problem seeing that thing and it's right up in the grill now also you've got a pro mode which gives you access to all kinds of settings here if you want to go in and toggle you want to play with the white balance exposure compensation focus whether it's auto focus manual focus you can do that all within the professional mode or the automatic mode actually has some AI functionality built in right up there in that corner just by pointing this at this object it figures out that it's a plant and you'll see the plant icon pop up in this location over here somewhere it's able to learn and figure out what these objects look like frequently adjust the camera settings accordingly so you end up with an image like that there so it's got a regular selfie mode but then I also noticed there is a selfie panorama and a gif animation mode I'm gonna leave it in Auto the selfie test very important here so it's an 8 megapixel image on the front camera look how happy that character is the glorious beard hairs which are incredible for autofocus might I add now another cool thing that this device has on it that I haven't seen before is this AI boost and that's gonna boost the performance of the device and juice out some extra horsepower from the Snapdragon 6-3 6 whether you want more power or if you want to save some battery life so you can turn that off and extend your battery but then I don't know you want to play a game or something you turn on AI boost to juice out a little more performance now another emphasis on the zenfone 5 is an improvement in the audio performance over the previous version so course as usual I want to test the audio so the implementation is actually kind of similar to the new Galaxy S 9 where you have audio coming out of the earpiece up here as well as on the bottom and each one kind of represents different frequency range so you get a little more high-end out of this one in clarity the low-end and the bass comes out at the bottom one thanks and you can tell when you cover up the bottom on how that operates these unusual this is the charge doc so that the speaker is ready to go when you want to take it with you this also oh I like oh wow I like what they've done with the speaker here certainly for watching YouTube there's a lot more clarity coming out of this one which is weird because this has two forward facing speakers there might be a little bit more bass on the pixel to excell but overall I think the experience on this one is somehow more pleasing that's one of the louder phones that I've tested absolutely claim music and create your own audio effect with the customized equalizer this is out of the box here fine-tuned audio output that fits your headphone configuration remember you do have a headphone jack DTS surround sound for your headphones we have normal settings settings for pop rock vocal and of course custom which allows you to toggle in your favorite equalization settings and then there's also sliders for bass and treble and you can save your own custom equalizer and we can optimize for Wired or Bluetooth headphones that's cool it's not just a headphone jack but it's it's a whole suite even myself there are moments where I still find myself in a pinch that I'm carrying the pixel to XL with no headphone jack it's just convenient to have that alright and if manufacturers keep it there I'm happy it's pretty bright for a non OLED display now it's important to know that pixel to excel display is not necessarily regarded as the top tier in the game at the moment but it is surprising when you see them head to head there's a slightly different color tint to it as well anyways this is an interesting device to me I mean that's why I'm making the video a lot of it has to do with the targeted price point all right this is the zenfone 5 there's gonna be the 5 Z and the 5 light I think it's gonna be in a compelling spot somewhere around that 400 dollar range it's a pretty interesting set of features at that price point yes you have the Snapdragon 636 in here but you add to it the ability to boost up some of the performance or toggle it back for power efficiency which that's gonna be a very power efficient chip for battery life and the implementation that they went with on the dual camera setup with the wide angle lens of course we're gonna see more about camera performance on this thing over time when I can evaluate the final software but the package as a whole with the large display in the small form-factor if you can get used to the knotch life or if it's something that doesn't bother you or if it's something you saw in the iPhone and you were like where is the Android version of that I believe we have our first player in that space right here in the zenfone 5 you can begin to make that comparison I'm gonna keep my eye on this one if you guys want me to dive a little deeper when a final software is out really getting to the nitty gritty compare it to some other players at this price point and do me a favor leave a thumb down below just to let me know you're interested in this device and I'll go ahead and do that but for now there it is the zenfone 5 unboxed here on unbox therapy