Back in what some would consider ancient times, there were two Taiwanese companies who made the majority of motherboards for most of the desktop PCs in the Western world. Gateway, Dell and others bought their motherboards in huge bulk at cheap prices and built their computers around the motherboards and got rich.
they weren’t happy with their small piece of the pie
These two motherboard manufacturers were Acer and Asus. After awhile, they weren’t happy with their small piece of the pie and made the smart decision of manufacturing their own PCs. Fast forward a bit and Acer and Asus have grown from humble beginnings into two of the best producers of bang for your buck PCs on the market.
They still weren’t satisfied and came on strong and successfully in the tablet market with the Acer Iconia Tab and quite popular Asus Transformer.
Moving on to the present, Asus is making a bold move into modern times with a line of smartphones.
All three of the Asus Zenfones come with Asus ZenUI OS built on Android 4.3 with promises from Asus of a future upgrade to KitKat 4.4.
They are available in 5 different colors – white, black, red, blue and yellow for the Zenfone 4 and white, black, red, purple and gold for Zenfone 5 and Zenfone 6.
Poetic isn’t it? Perhaps a bit melodramatic
From Asus marketing — “Change the color, change the mood. ZenFone 4 colors are from comfort and energy. The white of a cloud, the black of a vinyl record, the yellow of early morning sun, the red of a girl’s new ribbon, and the blue of a shimmering lake. Together they render a peaceful pastime, one that lingers as a special ordinary day.” Poetic isn’t it? Perhaps a bit melodramatic, but a huge step up from the garbage English coming from most China brands.
There is a low-light photo mode which adjusts pixels and uses image processing
In the camera department on the Asus Zenphone, Asus promises some revolutionary photos. An Asus developed tech called ‘PixelMaster’ which supposedly puts together software, hardware and optical design to give excellent image quality. There is a low-light photo mode which adjusts pixels and uses image processing to produce better photos indoors and in low-light. The phones are scheduled to use a 5-element optical system @ f2.0.
It remains to be seen whether this is a bunch of hub-bub or if the Asus Zenfones will truly put out some above-par images.
What’s interesting here is that all 3 Zenfones are scheduled to have quad-band WCDMA. This means they will work all around the world on 3G. It also makes them quite unique in the sub-$300 phone market, as very few unlocked large-screened phones in this price bracket carry quad-band WCDMA.
480p wouldn’t be considered terrible at a PPI of 233
The battery in the Zenfone 4 seems tiny at 1200mA. For a 4.0″ phone, it may be okay, but it will depend on how efficiently the Atom SoC runs on the Zenfone 4. The resolution is quite low as well at 480p which should help battery life some. On a 4.0″ phone 480p wouldn’t be considered terrible at a PPI of 233. Still, it’s significantly lower than 5.0″@720p which gives a ppi of 296.
I’m surprised they bothered with a 4.0″ model. There’s no advantage to be seen here with such a low screen density and small battery. If I were Asus, I might have gone with 4.5, 5.0 and 6.0. But perhaps they’re looking to target the very low budget sub $100 market, and in this case the Zenfone 4 may fit in nicely.
The Zenfone 5 will be available in at least 3 configurations. So far there is a 1GB RAM/8GB ROM and 2GB/16GB with the 2.0GHz z2580, and a 1GB/8GB 1.6GHz z2560 version.
In a surprising decision, Asus is going with an Atom based SoC as opposed to MTK or budget Snapdragon. It’s especially surprising being that both MTK and Asus are Taiwanese based manufacturers.
The GPU in the Zenfones will be PowerVR SGX544 MP2. The SGX544 is the same GPU that was in MT6589. The difference here is that in the MT6589 the GPU was single core, while in these Atom based phones, the GPU is dual-core which should give a significant boost to graphics juice.
I still hold the belief that 4.2 vs 4.4 is the last thing to be considered when purchasing a phone
Notice the asterisks. These are official stats from Asus site and it looks that they will surely be planning an upgrade to KitKat, which should make some people happy and may be a major attraction to the phone, though I still hold the belief that 4.2 vs 4.4 is the last thing to be considered when purchasing a phone. The double-asterisks indicate that depending on region, the Zenfone may be only available in single-SIM variants.
It’s important to remember that Asus is notorious for creating different versions depending on market area. For sake of example, one locale may carry dual-SIM 1.6GHz 1gb RAM/8gb ROM Zenfone 5, while the next continent over may be selling single-SIM 2.0GHz 2gb RAM/16gb ROM Zenfone 5.
Beyond the possibilities of different SoC and RAM/ROM, I’m looking forward to Asus keeping the quad-band WCDMA across all versions of the Zenfone lineup. Judging by the stats at the official site, it appears this will be the case.
As far as styling goes, these models look nice and have an interesting array of colors available. The brushed metal at the base of the front does add a very unique look.
Zenfone 4, 5, 6 review specifications conclusion
Asus stepping into the phone game is a big deal. It’s a big crowd, but I think Asus can be successful here. They’ve already made a couple of smart moves by paying special attention to the camera. Whether the promises will bear fruit is another story, but what Asus has touted is intriguing.
Quad-band WCDMA in all of the Zenfones is another big step up for budget minded phone shoppers and should be of interest to anyone who travels.
The choice of Atom SoC, while somewhat perplexing is none the less an interesting one. Let’s hope the SoC choice not only turns out interesting, but a good one as well.
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