Taiwanese tech major Asus, which has a sizeable presence in the Indian computer market for years, is now poised to test the waters in the burgeoning Indian smartphone market. Asus is all set to introduce its ZenFone range of smartphones - the ZenFone 4, ZenFone 5, and ZenFone 6 - in India on July 9. The phones, which made their debut early this year at CES 2014, are expected to be priced in India under Rs 20,000. The actual prices will be announced on the launch day.
We got a chance to experience the ZenFone 5 before it officially launches in India next week.
The Asus ZenFone 5 will come in two variants - 8GB and 16GB, and a wide range of colours - black, white, red, purple, and gold. Our review unit was an 8GB, black-coloured model.
If the ZenFone 5 comes for under Rs 15,000, it will, indeed, be one of the very few good-looking phones in the mid-range segment. Packed in a plastic chassis, the phone features the company's proprietary concentric circle finish at the lower-end of the front panel and on the power and volume buttons - which is its first distinctive feature. (A colleague, however, said that the lower-end of the phone could also be used to file nails because of its abrasive surface.) Not only the look and feel, the phone also has good ergonomics. Its curved back adds to the design and makes it easy to grip. Also, it does not weigh much. The phone's back panel is made of plastic, but has a metal-coloured matte finish that makes it look handsome. Underneath the back panel of this dual-SIM phone are two slots for SIM cards and one slot for a microSD card.
The only thing I didn't like about the phone's design is its tall height. The phone was too long for me to operate with a single hand. Had it been a little shorter (or consequently, slightly wider), I would have been more comfortable in handling it. But this might not hold true for all users.
The ZenFone 5 will come running Android 4.3 Jelly Bean out of the box (with a guaranteed update to Android 4.4 KitKat). The phone does not run stock Android; the company has tweaked the OS quite a lot and added its own Zen UI layer atop. I must admit that after a long time there comes a user interface on an Android phone that has managed to attract me.
The Asus Zen UI is both neat and intuitive, and also has a freshness to it. There are certain app icons that look absolutely smart; the list includes camera, clock, gallery, calculator, and browser icons. Asus seems to have paid a lot of attention to even smallest of the small details in designing the user interface. I was quite impressed by the screen that appeared every time I made a call. The elements on that screen are so aesthetically placed that I couldn't avoid looking at it until the recipient answered the call. (See the image below)
Another interesting feature that quite surprised me was its built-in feature to record telephonic conversations. It may appear to be a basic feature, but this is something you usually don't find in most Android phones. Even on the Google Play store I couldn't find a single decent app that recorded both sides of the conversation with clarity.
Its Easy Mode feature is another highlight of the phone. What it does is that it offers users a friendly yet intuitive user interface with a simple layout and core functions. It brings down number of screens to two - one is home and the other is the screen that lists all apps on your phone. The layout has slightly larger icons, which could be of help to elderly. The easy to operate mode could also be of use to people, such as the elderly, who are not comfortable with the usual Android interface that features number of homescreens, app screens, and widget screens.
Notification tray is something, I believe, users access the most throughout the day, and this was were I found this phone hampering my experience. Being a Nexus 4 users, I am in the habit of pulling down the notification tray using a thumb sideways. But the same gesture on this phone always presented me with Asus' quick settings list. To get to the notification panel on the ZenFone 5, I had to keep my finger or thumb at 90 degrees to the screen before using the swipe down gesture.
Pleased with its design and appearance, I was going smooth with the phone until I discovered that the phone failed to run the Facebook mobile app. Every time I tapped on the Facebook app, I was served with one of the three error messages - "Unfortunately, Facebook has stopped" or "Facebook isn't responding. Do you want to close it?" or "Just a moment" (but nothing happened even after minutes). I couldn't even get to the login page once. I tried almost all the possible tricks I could including restarting the phone, and uninstalling and reinstalling the app, but without avail. I am now waiting for it to be fixed with the next software update. I am assuming this issue to be limited to this particular unit, but then who knows?
Update: Asus has quickly rolled out an update that fixes the Facebook app issue.
There are some Asus-centric bloatware apps that come pre-installed on the phone. I wish I could get rid of them.
The phone's 5-inch 720p display is capable of producing rich colours. Otherwise, phones in this price range (as we assume it to be a mid-range device) are often seen with a display producing washed-out colours. The ZenFone 5 comes with a pretty responsive touchscreen, and therefore, it was quite smooth to navigate it. The screen has a Corning Gorilla Glass 3 layer atop to protect it from scratches. Also, I didn't find myself struggling to view content on it under direct sunlight. Viewing angles on the phone are also great.
The ZenFone 5's 8 megapixel rear camera captures great results in both bright-light and low-light conditions, but don't expect them to be detailed. The camera works quite well in low-light environments. It automatically detects when there is low light and asks you to tap the owl icon to enable the low-light mode. I captured same frames at night in both normal and low-light modes, and the results were strikingly different. The functioning of its camera in low-light is the phone's another remarkable feature.
The front camera is decent, but not great. In other words, it's okay for video calls, but not for selfies. The ZenFone 5 supports 1080p video recording and playback.
The camera app has certain special effects modes; you can set any of them to capture a frame in that particular mode. I found the LOMO mode growing on me. Quite like other phones, it also offers a lot of options to customise your frames.
Under its hood is a 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Atom Z2560 along with 2GB of RAM. Don't presume its performance based on the number of cores it has as the processor includes Intel's Hyper Threading technology, which makes it appear to the OS that it has two processing cores for each physical core in a CPU. The Hyper Threading technology does not really double the number of cores, but it creates virtual processing cores and adds to the performance when multiple tasks are being processed at a time. Having used the ZenFone 5 for quite sometime, I have not faced any lag in its performance. Also, I could easily multitask on the phone.
The speakers on the phone produce decent sound - both in terms of quality and loudness. The phone's 8GB of internal storage offers 5GB of actual storage space to users. Users can, however, expand its memory as it supports a microSD card of up to 64 GB.
The call reception quality on the phone is good and there wasn't any call drop throughout the review period. The phone has a fairly good battery life, but not great. On a single charge, the phone (with normal use) lasted for a little less than a day. Expect its battery life to go down over a period of time.
But as the headline says, our final verdict would depend on what price tag Asus attaches to the ZenFone 5 in India.
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