Asus Zenfone 5

Asus Zenfone 5: First Impressions

EW DELHI: The Mobile World Congress 2018 conference is still a couple of days away from concluding and we have already seen some of the most powerful smartphones of the year. Although brands like Samsung, LG, Sony and HMD are already out with their best offerings, Asus is one such brand that was yet to showcase its smartphones. The Taiwanese tech firm, following the tradition, has this time unveiled what it calls is its most powerful mobile device for 2018 -Zenfone 5Z. However, alongside the 5Z the company also debuted the Zenfone 5, which is essentially the same in design but with sligthly less powerful innards.

Gadgets Now got some time to spend with the Asus Zenfone 5, which now has a new design and a better display than ever before. The handset is confirmed to hit the Indian shelves sometime this year. Until that happens, here’s our first impressions of the Asus Zenfone 5, giving you a fair idea of what the smartphone-maker has in store for its fans.

If you are familiar with Asus’ Zenfone lineup, it would only take you seconds to realise that the Zenfone 5’s design is a massive take off from that of the Zenfone 4 series or even the Zenfone 3. It is more block-shaped this time giving a better grip. Many may say it looks like the Apple iPhone X but then Asus tells us that even with a ‘notch’ at the top of the screen and the vertical rear camera setup, it has delivered an even better mobile device than the iPhone X.

The Zenfone 5’s 6.2-inch canvas seemed the most impressive among everything else in the limited time we spent with the smartphone. The screen shows content in full HD+ resolution and is also arguably world’s first to sport 19:9 aspect ratio display. For reference, the Galaxy S9 has 18.5:9 aspect ratio. The Zenfone 5’s IPS display reproduces content impressively and the so-called ‘notch’ is smaller than that of the iPhone X, showing tad bit more information than the Apple’s flagship.

Running Android 8.0 Oreo (ZenUI 5.0), the smartphone’s UI is cleaner now. The notification tray, camera UI and everything else is implemented keeping the ‘notch’ in focus. The executives told Gadgets Now that they have worked hard on removing the number of preloaded apps on the smartphone, something we have been complaining about in almost all our Zenfone reviews. The preloaded apps have gone down to just nine this time.

We even got a glimpse of the smartphone’s AI capabilities. The executives say that this time Asus has given special attention to AI and has integrated it even deeper than before. Most of the AI features are designed to work offline as well, something that for now sounds impressive if nothing else. Of course, you’ll get Google Assistant for everything else.

Since we were with the Zenfone 5 for a limited time, nothing much can be said about its processor performance or the battery performance. But in case you are wondering, the Asus Zenfone 5 runs on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor, while its more powerful variant, the Zenfone 5Z runs on the Snapdragon 845. The former comes in 4GB or 6GB RAM variant clubbed with 64GB inbuilt storage, while the latter only comes with 8GB RAM in tow along with 256GB inbuilt storage. As for the battery, both the Zenfone 5 and the 5Z use a 3300mAh battery.

Besides the inbuilt storage, RAM and processor, everything else stays the same in both the handsets.

The camera is another factor in the new Zenfone lineup that is being marketed heavily. The Zenfone 5 smartphones boast of a dual rear camera. One is the 12MP Sony IMX363 sensor with f/1.8 aperture while the other one has a 120-degree wide angle lens with f/2.2 aperture. Selfie lovers get an 8MP camera with f/2.0 aperture. Not only you get sharp shots courtesy the 3-axis sensor but now you can also shoot 4K videos at 60fps.