People usually associate the brand Asus with computers or related accessories but the company has already proven that it is capable of producing some top quality phones. The Zenfone 3 is one of their latest models and it costs about $370. Is it worth the price? Learn more if this phone is any good in the full review.

Thanks to Gearbest for sending the Asus Zenfone 3 for a review.

Asus Zenfone 3 Review: VIDEO REVIEW

Asus Zenfone 3 Review: UNBOXING

The phone ships with all the usual stuff and some extras include a pair of earphones.

Asus Zenfone 3 Review: DESIGN and DISPLAY

The Zenfone 3 is a nice looking phone and it uses some premium materials like Gorilla Glass on the front and rear and a metal chassis.

Obviously, using glass has its tradeoffs as the phone is a huge fingerprint magnet.

However, the buttons are made of plastic and the hybrid dual SIM card tray rattles quite a bit.

On a positive note, the 5.5” 1080p display is just beautiful to look at. It is sharp, vibrant and bright both for indoor and outdoor use.

It’s great that we have an 8MP camera and the notification LED light but I don’t understand why Asus thinks that implementing the non-backlit capacitive buttons is okay. Also, I always love the back button on the right side.

The Zenfone 3 has a pretty powerful camera setup that includes a high-end 16MP Sony IMX298 sensor, 4-axis OIS, 6-axis EIS, hybrid laser/phase/contrast detection autofocus system and dual tone dual-LED flash. The fingerprint scanner is one of the best. It’s fast, accurate and it allows you to unlock the phone straight from the standby mode.

As far as audio, I love the quality of sound via the headset jack. Also, the loudspeaker is great. The volume output is good and the sound is crisp, and balanced.

Asus Zenfone 3 Review: HARDWARE and PERFORMANCE, BATTERY LIFE

When it comes to hardware, the Zenfone 3 ships with the midrange-level Snapdragon 625 chip, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of expandable storage.

The sheers specs may suggest the midrange nature of the phone but the Zenfone 3 is an excellent performer when it comes to 3D gaming. There are no skipped frames or stutter and the phone stays absolutely cold to the touch even after 30 mins of gaming. That’s really impressive.

In addition, I just love the Snapdragon 625 chip due to its power efficiency. The phone ships with the 3000mAh battery, which does not look impressive on paper but I could constantly get over 5 hours of screen-on time with the max. auto-brightness, using the phone quite heavily and having installed a lot of apps and 4 Google accounts.

Finally, the phone supports the Quick Charge 3.0 feature but it ships with a regular charger, so it takes about 2 hours to fully charge the phone.

Asus Zenfone 3 Review: BENCHMARKS

Asus Zenfone 3 Review: USER INTERFACE

The user interface is what makes the Asus phones unique. The phone runs on the Android 6.0 but we have a heavily customized ZenUI skin on top of it. Honestly, I didn’t like it at first but it started growing on me after 2 weeks of using this phone.

There are so many features, customization options and some little tweaks to make the phone look your own. Just to name a few, you can choose from a huge collection of themes, select from different icons packs and so on. Also, you can use some gesture and motion controls that work well. I’m not sure if you are going to use all the customization options since there are many more features to choose from.

Most importantly, the user interface performance is good on the daily basis. There is no stutter or lag despite all those extra features.

Asus Zenfone 3 Review: CAMERA

The camera app is a good example of how Asus looks into their smartphones. There are just so many shooting modes to choose from and I’m not really sure if an average user would use them all.

Firstly, you can tweak the image settings using the manual mode. Other modes that I found useful are super resolution mode that takes images at a whopping resolution of 66MP. Finally, I loved using the low-light and night modes.

Asus Zenfone 3 Review: IMAGE QUALITY

IT IS HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED TO DOWNLOAD FULL RESOLUTION CAMERA SAMPLES TO SEE THE ACTUAL IMAGE QUALITY. THE PICTURES UPLOADED ON THE WEBSITE ARE 50% SMALLER IN RESOLUTION.

When it comes to the actual image quality, the Asus Zenfone 3 can take some nice-looking photos that are pretty sharp, have a good amount of detail and accurate colors. Also, the white balance is usually spot on. My only complaint would be that some of the images look underexposed. Anyway, I tested the camera in the cloudy day.

As for low-light camera performance, it is actually very good. Sure, there is more noise but the camera takes some flagship-worthy night photos. The dedicated night mode will brighten up the image by lowering the shutter speed but the images usually turn out softer. The low-light mode takes 4MP images that have less noise but there is less detail too.

The selfie camera is usually good but the selfies I took came out slightly soft, so I may not have held my hand steadily.

The 4k video looks sharp and detailed, the color reproduction is accurate and the sound recording quality is decent. Also, the video stabilization works pretty well reducing the shakiness. A few complaints would be that there were a few noticeable video artefacts and the auto-exposure feature could work more gracefully.

Download full resolution camera samples

Asus Zenfone 3 Review: CONNECTIVITY

When it comes to connectivity, I have zero complaints. The signal reception and the call quality are great using either SIM card as the phone comes with a hybrid dual SIM card tray.

Also, the GPS is very accurate, Bluetooth 4.2 and dual-band Wifi work absolutely fine.

Asus Zenfone 3 Review: CONCLUSIONS

The Asus Zenfone 3 is quite an interesting phone since it has a midrange-level chipset but the flagship-grade real life performance.

Also, the phone has a nice and premium-looking design, excellent display, great audio quality and a very capable camera

Even though the Snapdragon 625 chip is not as powerful as the 820-series processors, there is plenty of power under the hood to handle anything you throw at it. Also, a great power management of this chip leads to a good battery life.

I love that the user interface performance is great too. However, you may love it or hate it since you may not really need all those extra features, so you may end up using a third-party launcher.

Some more serious complaints would be the non-backlit capacitive keys, the SIM card tray rattles quite a bit and finally, the phone is an enormous fingerprint magnet.

At the end of the day, I still love the Asus Zenfone 3 after using it for a couple of weeks but it is up to you to decide if the midrange-level chip and the previously mentioned shortcomings are important to you or not.

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Asus has been known for producing a wide range of tech products and the company has built a good reputation in the smartphone industry. The beautiful-looking Zenfone 3 sports some great specs and a lot of flagship-grade features.

The Zenfone 3 follows a familiar design language we have seen on other Asus phones. It uses a metal trim that goes around the device along with metal buttons. A front and rear is covered with the Gorilla Glass 3 for scratch resistance.

Even though the Zenfone 3 sports a midrange-level Snapdragon 625 chip, this processor has already proven that it is a capable performer both when it comes to day-to-day use and gaming.

Other key specs include 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage (expandable up to 256GB via the microSD card slot) and Adreno 506 GPU.

As far as display goes, we have a 5.5″ 1080p LCD panel, which has a peak brightness output of 600nits.

One of the key selling points of this device is its camera. The Zenfone 3 sports a 16 MP shooter with f/2.0 aperture, laser/phase detection autofocus, OIS (4-axis) and dual-LED (dual tone) flash.

Another key feature is the Hi-Res audio assured by the home-brewed SonicMaster technology. This tech is said to assure a high-quality sound both from the external speaker and via the headset jack.

All in all, the Asus Zenfone 3 shapes up to be a great all-around device. The only shortcoming of it is the mid-level Snapdragon 625 chip. Other than that, the phone seems like a great device for the price and we can’t wait to test it out in our review labs.

You can now pre-order Asus Zenfone 3 from Everbuying.net for $430.94 and the phone will start shipping on October 30th.

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Just days after clearing TENAA, Taiwan-based smartphone and PC maker, ASUS has officially unveiled its Zenfone 3 smartphone models in China. The Zenfone 3 models include the ASUS Zenfone 3, Zenfone 3 Deluxe having both SD 820 and SD 821 versions, and Zenfone 3 Ultra.

Top of the pack is the ASUS Zenfone 3 Deluxe, the world’s first smartphone to feature the Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chipset. The Zenfone 3 Deluxe equally features a design where the antenna bands are hidden with a premium all-metal build.

Along with the Snapdragon 821 chips, the ASUS Zenfone 3 Deluxe sports a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display, 6GB of RAM, and a mammoth 256GB of built-in storage. Obviously, there is no need for an SD card. There is also a cool 23MP Sony IMX318 rear camera with OIS, laser auto-focus, RBG color sensor calibration. The rear camera is protected by sapphire glass and  an 8MP front-facing selfie shooter completes the set up.

The Zenfone 3 Deluxe also comes with an SD 820 version with 3GB RAM and 32GB of internal storage but both versions run Android Marshmallow with ASUS Zen UI 3.0 on top. The device also features a fingerprint scanner, dual-SIM slots, and a 3000mAh battery with QC 3.0 Support among others.

The Zenfone 3 Ultra is the largest of the lot, with a 6.8-inch display having a resolution of 1080 pixels. The big Zenfone 3 Ultra also comes with a big 4,600mAh battery that supports fast charging with Quick Charge 3.0. The Zenfone 3 Ultra is powered by an Octa-core Snapdragon 652 SoC accompanied by 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage on board which can be expanded up to 128GB. On the camera end, the ASUS Zenfone 3 Ultra packs a 23-megapixel primary camera on the rear and a 8-megapixel front shooter for selfies.

Next is the ASUS Zenfone 3 with a 5.5-inch Full-HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) display.  Recall that there is a low-end Zenfone 3 version with SD 430 chips, 5.2-inch display unveiled in India but this version of the Zenfone 3 is powered by the Snapdragon 652 SoC with 4GB of RAM. The phone packs 64GB of internal storage that can be expanded via microSD card. As far as the cameras are concerned, the Asus ZenFone 3 packs a 16-megapixel primary camera on the rear and a 8-megapixel front shooter for selfies and is powered by a 3000mAh battery.

The top-end Zenfone 3 Deluxe with SD 821 chips seems to be priced at 4,999 Yuan (around $750), while the one with SD 820 is priced at 3299 Yuan ($495). The Zenfone 3 Ultra carries a price tag of 3999 Yuan in China ($600) and finally the Zenfone 3 starts at  2699 Yuan ($405)

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ASUS loves setting records. After being the first manufacturer to announce a 4GB RAM phone at last year’s Mobile World Congress, they are setting another one again this year by announcing the Zenfone 3 Deluxe as the first phone with the new Snapdragon 821 processor.

The Snapdragon 821 processor is a slightly upgraded version of the successful SD 820 which has been gracing this year’s flagship devices. Rumours had earlier said that the Galaxy Note 7 will be the first phone to feature the SoC but ASUS beat Samsung (and even Xiaomi) to it. The processor has a higher clock speed (2.4GHz) and pushes power efficiency even farther than the Snapdragon 820 processor.

The Zenfone 3 Deluxe sports a 5.7” FHD screen, 6GB of RAM, multiple built-in storage variants which start at 64GB and maxes out at 256GB.  ASUS has put a 23MP camera that features ASUS’s TriTech Focus.

The Zenfone 3 Deluxe with Snapdragon 821 will be priced at  24,990 TWD ($776) for the 6GB RAM/256GB ROM version which is a fair price. If you are not willing to shell out such an amount, the Zenfone 3 Deluxe with Snapdragon 820, 4GB of RAM, and 32GB of built-in storage will be available for 15,990 TWD ($496) and another with the same SD 820 chip but 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage for 17,990 ($559).

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ASUS has already confirmed that it will launch its new ZenFone 3 smartphones at Computex, Taiwan starting May 30. The company seems to be launching three new smartphones in the series and we already have the three possible names for the same — ZenFone 3, ZenFone 3 Deluxe and ZenFone 3 Max. The company has already kind of confirmed the launch of the three handsets with its teaser video released a couple of days back. Now, it looks like one of these ZenFone models has been spotted in the wild in China.

The image isn’t very clear, which makes it hard for us to see what’s on the back panel. What we could make out was that the phone comes with rear placed volume buttons, just like its predecessor. The camera sensor along with some other tech is located on the top left corner. Another thing almost confirmed by this leak is that the phone will be made out of metal.

While this may not be so clear, what really helps us understand the design of the three ZenFone models is the basic renders of the devices that poped up on the internet. All the three smartphones seem to of different sizes, with the one that we saw in the above above probably the Max or Deluxe version with the largest form factor. The other two models come with a slightly different design, with the camera and the other sensor located near the center, above the physical home button. The speaker and USB ports are located at the bottom according to this render.

As mentioned above, the company had already released the first video teaser for the new ZenFone 3 series. You can check them out from below.

Meanwhile, the launch is just 10 days away. So stay tuned for more details in the next few days.

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So, what can we expect from the new ZenFone series?

We know that the new ZenFone 3 series won’t be coming with Intel chips this year, which opens up the possibility of Snapdragon series processors. Now, the first ZenFone 3 model seems to have been spotted on the benchmarking website, AnTuTu revealing key specs of the device. The model is called as the ASUS Z016D. The company is aiming the top-end segment with this device, using the new Snapdragon 820 chipset inside with Adreno 530 GPU. For memory, the phone comes with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. At the back, you get a massive 23MP rear camera sensor, while up front, there will be an 8MP shooter. The display size is unknown but the resolution will be FHD 1920 x 1080p. As for software, the phone will be running on Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow version.

Along with the specs details, AnTuTu also revealed that the new ZenFone 3 model scores around 135,000 points on AnTuTu, which is a great. This puts the device in direct competition with other top-end flagships like Xiaomi Mi 5, Galaxy S7 and HTC 10.

The company has already confirmed the release of the new models at Computex 2016. You can check out the teaser video from down below.

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