ASUS Zenfone 2

[TH3xS1THL0RD]

I own the phone and have it hooked up to cricket wireless it's amazing and I have had no problems with it so far. I benchmarked it and got high scores.

[henrizzle]

How did he not mention dat bezel? It looks like a freaking tablet

[SeriouslyMikey]

jeez linus its called turning down the brightness and not using it constantly to save battery.... Same thing with everything else. My 2nd gen ipod nano can survive a complete week without any brightness. So can my phone. But seeming that you do use a lot of power ehh..... get a battery bank I guess.

This does seem like a nice badass phone for a good price.

 

I cant see my phone with the brightness all the way down, it actually ends up straining my eyes. I have a smart watch that uses Bluetooth, that eats up battery and I listen to music whenever I am driving, walking or doing generic tasks. Then again, it seems that Linus uses his phones far more than even me. I am able to get just under a day and a half on my Note 2. 

 

Still, wanting this phone. It's cheap and seems like a bit of a steal and is far smaller than the phone I have now, which is awesome. 

[lazydog]

I have a Zenfone 4 (a lower tier-phone released way before the Zenfone 2) and I have to agree with the bloatware issue. It's just too much! But nonetheless, very nice phone for it's price. 

[DeViLzzz]

I don't like smartphone talk but liked the topic cuz I like some of what Linus does.  I am looking forward to the day when pc hardware talk takes over smartphone talk big time even if it is just for a month.  Seriously there are times where I wish I had a smartphone but we don't need so many released so often.  I wish the people buying them like they are buying groceries would stop.  I get that they serve a purpose but you don't need a new smartphone every freaking year or sooner and if this would stop I would get to hear less news about these.  There is way too much smartphone talk for my liking on LTT.

[Comessy]

HO LEE SHIT

 

TAKE MY MONEY

[GoldSrc]

Why was this posted on vessel and YouTube consecutively, isn't vessel supposed to be ahead?

Not for important time sensitive reviews and stuff.

[Cactu]

Not for important time sensitive reviews and stuff.

Ah i see, thanks

[Monte_Carlo]

It looks like a damn solid device for a low price.  Comes with a few trade offs.  Honestly?  If this thing had been released a month earlier, I'd be rocking the Zenfone 2 instead of my LG G3. 

[patrick3027]

Two questions :

- Why would I get this over the 1+1?

- Is it a 64 bit processor?

[Aytex]

are the random apps able to be uninstalled?

[Lord Kavendish]

I was really looking forward to this review. Since I don't see anything about the Zenfone C on this forum, I thought about posting some thoughts about it here. 

 

First things first, I am - or maybe better - was an iPhone user for all my smartphone time. Starting with the 3GS, then later the iPhone 4S, followed finally by the iPhone 5. For me there was never anything wrong with the iPhone or the iOS. It just plain worked and for me that was that. But now that I am travelling around the planet, my iPhone got stolen in Nepal a couple of weeks ago. At first I was happy about the unusual quiet, but since I got to Vietnam I realized how handy a cellphone is.

I was looking for the Zenfone 2 in every shop in Ho Chi Minh City, because I wanted to own one since it was announced at CES. Sadly they all told me it was only available if they order it. 

So I finally decided on the Zenfone C, mostly because it was almost for free but also I wanted to get used to the ZenUI until the time I could finally get a Zenfone 2. 

 

I bought it in a electronic store in Vietnam for around 2.200.000 Vietnamese Dong which is about US$ 100. The phone works, it looks good (I got the red version) and is - even though mostly plastic - solidly build. It features dual SIM support, and also a MicroSD card reader (which is handy since the Phone has only 8 GB of storage). It does not support 4G/LTE but that for me is no problem, since wlan is quite enough here. I wont bore you with more specs, just google the Phone and you'll get anything you want. I'll stick with my experience.

It is slightly bigger than the iPhone 5, and I really like the power and volume buttons. They have a nice feel and are positioned in a easy to reach spot on the right top side of the phone. The phone is fast and RAM is enough for my use, but for more intense games... well it's a 100$ phone, don't expect to much. The phone also gets quite hot when watching youtube or playing games.

 

I personally really like the ZenUI. For me as an iPhone user it was easy enough to understand and works just fine. But as Linus said in the Zenfone 2 review, there is an incredible amount of Apps on the phone I do not know what they could be for and I really don't want to take the time to find out. 

The screen isn't to nice, but good enough for my use (which is watching a youtube video every now and then, whatsapp, and phone calls). But two things just plain suck. Firstly the camera. It's a 5 megapixel camera, but the picture it takes feel worse than those of my ancient Sharp GX20... If the camera sucks that much, ASUS should better not have included it and spent the money on a better battery. Which leads into the second thing I don't like, the (even though removable) 2000 mAh battery doesn't keep the phone running for a whole day. And it feels slow to charge. All of this is not really a big problem for me personally, since I wake around with a power-bank and a camera all the time, but it's worth mentioning. 

 

All in all for a 100$ phone it is awesome. The amount of stuff they deliver for this amount of money is great. I never expected it to be great, but it just plain works. Having this phone I really wonder why I spent so much money on iPhones. But also I am really looking forward to get rid of it and get the Zenfone 2. 

[beingGamer]

do the navigation buttons glow? they are of no use in dark

then the lock button position is awkward

bezels are big in all asus phones

they should have taken all buttons at back just like LG instead of just 2 and press & hold to launch camera & other app rather than double tab. its a handy feature

[euzen01]

It's absolutely fantastic!

[LOST TALE]

Please make an update on battery

[b3e90]

   I would also like to see an update on the battery. The review didn't seem to state which update version they were on, just that it was fully updated. Asus claims that updates they have released have fixed the issue. There is an update version in the Asus support site for version 2.13.40.13 that states power consumption has been reduced, although I would like something to back that claim up.  I've seen a number of reviews on this product and a bunch of them criticize the battery life, others say it's mediocre at best. As an exception, Android Central said it was "admirable". Most of these reviews were on the ZE551ML or the ZE550ML. Anandtech posted a pre-review, and they should be coming out with a full review soon, so I'll definitely be paying attention to that as well.

 

That being said battery life depends on a ton of conditions. The fact that probably all reviews were made with different variables could affect how fast the battery drains. That on top of all the phones models that were released under the market name Zenfone 2 with different hardware further complicates the issue of finding other reviews that have similar results.