Asus ZenFone Selfie Review: A Delight for Selfie Lovers

Selfie, a word which is there from a long period of time but in recent time it has got its true meaning and mobile manufacturer has helped a lot to spread and create awareness about this word. Almost all mobile manufacturer has launched their own selfie oriented device in the market, and users has also started loving these smartphone which ccomes with powerful secondary camera which lets users snap an image with front camera and image will be great, sometimes better than rear camera.

Video Review :-

Back in June, in Computex, Taiwan based smartphone company, Asus has announced their first selfie oriented smartphone, the Asus ZenFone Selfie which comes with a powerful 13MP front facing camera along with dual tone flash.

Build And Design Of Asus ZenFone Selfie :-

When it comes to build and design, then there are very little changes which company has made here on ZenFone Seflie as compared with Asus ZenFone 2 (Review) which company has launched earlier this year. It has same design, same placement of buttons and ports.

It has same back panel with curve design at back which provides better grip to the device, but this time back panel is more smooth, there are couple of changes which you might notice, like a big front facing camera, and a laser auto focus at rear of the device. When compared to ZenFone 2, this Zenfone Selfie is little taller or you can say bigger,

Rest of the design remains the same like there are no buttons or connectivity ports on either side of the device, there are volume rockers at back which seems to be perfect location.

I dont know why Asus hasnt learned from its ZenFone 2 and here as well company has decided to place the power button at the top of the device which is one of the most uncomfortable location to reach.

At top of phone you will find a 3.5 mm audio jack along with secondary mic for noise cancellation and at bottom you have a micro USB port for charging and data sync along with primary mic.

The front side of device is occupied by 5.5 inch full HD screen, and as per me, FHD is well enough on a smartphone, just above screen you have an 13MP front facing camera with dual tone flash, and below screen you will find three touch capacitive which again does not support back light, and just below this you have nice metallic chin which do nothing, just increases the size of phone.

At back you have 13 MP auto focus rear camera with dual tone LED flash and laser auto focus which lets you quickly focus on any subject.

Here as well you can remove the back panel and once you do this you will find another change which company has made as compared with Asus ZenFone 2, and its removable battery, thankfully Asus has learned something from ZenFone 2 where they has a provided sealed battery, but on Asus Zenfone Selfie you can remove battery by your own.

With 156.5 x 77.2 x 10.8mm dimensions, phone is not easy to carry and quite big, one hand usage of phone is certainly out of the picture and 170 grams weight is also not what we can say easy to carry.

Hardware And Specs Of Asus ZenFone Selfie :-

When it comes to under the hood features, Asus has made quite big changes here, now instead of partnering with their long term partners Intel, here Asus has took the help of Qualcomm, and Asus ZenFone Selfie is powered by octa core Snapdragon 615 processor, yes one of the most questioned processor of the year.

Asus ZenFone Selfie comes in two variants, the 16GB variant has got 2GB of RAM and 32GB variant has got 3GB of RAM, both variant has Adreno 405 GPU which is good enough to handle most of the games but when you try to play high level games you might see some lags.

For connectivity, it supports most of the common connectivity options like Dual SIM, 4G LTE / 3G HSPA+, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS.

Software Of Asus ZenFone Selfie :-

Asus ZenoFone Selfie runs on Android 5.0.2 which company has heavily customized and add tons of features, and company is calling it ZenUI. On lock screen you can add up to three shortcuts which you can launch instantly, you also get weather information along with time.

This ZenUI also supports some cool gesture controls like you can dram ‘S’ on lock screen to launch your front facing camera, or you can also draw ‘e’ to launch eMail.

Asus has placed its power button at the top, which is one of the awkward position, thankfully ZenFone Selfie support double tap to wake which make things more easy. You can up to 7 home screen on ZenFone Selfie.

When you pull down your notification drawer you will find tons of option there which you can customize. In UI you will find lots of bloatwares, some of them are useful but most of them are useless.

Display Of Asus ZenFone Selfie :-

Asus ZenFone Selfie has got 5.5 inch full HD display, which might not seems great nowadays as you have 2K display in market, but we think FHD on a phone is perfect. It provides nice viewing angles and it is quite responsive under sunlight as well.

Asus has made sure that you dont get scratches on screen and for this they had used Corning Gorilla Glass 4 on it, its the toughest glass you can get in the market as of now, and trust us its pretty much solid. You can check our scratch test below :-

Camera Of Asus ZenFone Selfie :-

Now comes the best part of this review, ZenFone Selfie boost two 13MP camera with five-prism Largan lens and Toshiba sensors, there is also a dual tone LED flash which provide some level natural effect when you click images under low lights.

Back camera of ZenFone Selfie has also got laser auto focus which provides fast focus on subject, there are very few smartphone’s which comes with same technology like OnePlus Two, Asus ZenFone Laser and LG G4.

Lets talk about rear camera first, back camera has got f/2.0 aperture and comes with Asus PixelMaster technology, images captured using the rear camera has good amount of details but when you zoom into the image, you will find some noise.

One thing which is good here is that whenever you capture image, it tell you that you are in low lighting condition and you should switch to night mode or you should try HDR mode, so software is good enough to tell what you need to select.

There are lots of modes available which you can select Auto, Manual, Night, Low Light, and even HDR and Depth of Field. You can also shoot videos in Full HD, there is also option to shoot time lapse or slow motion videos.

When it comes to front facing camera, again we have 13MP shooter with dual tone flash and same Toshiba sensor, when it comes to capturing images, it do capture good images when compared with same priced smartphone’s. Front facing camera focuses well, color reproduction is good and skin tone looks well.

(Depth Of Effect)

(HDR)

(HDR)

(Front Camera Depth Of Effect)

(Beautification)

(Front HDR)

(Front HDR)

Battery Of Asus ZenFone Selfie :-

3000mAh battery with Snapdragon 615 chipset is very decent, you can easily get one full day life, however tons of bloatwares and some of them runs in background and do eat your battery. It has same battery which we have seen Asus ZenFone 2, and when we compared with it, we saw less battery life then it on ZenFone Selfie.

Performance Of Asus ZenFone Selfie :-

We found that this ZenFone Selfie provide much bettery performance when it is compared with other smartphone’s runs on same processor. However when compared with ZenFone 2, we found that performance is almost same, but animation on ZenFone 2 is better.

When it comes to heating, we can say Asus has did its homework very well, as we have seen almost all smartphone’s which runs on Snapdragon 615 faces heating issue, heating is here as well but not that much which we have seen on other devices.

While playing heavy games and multitasking, temperature raises up to 35 degree Celsius, its not that much but its certainly well enough to make you worry.

Here are some benchmarking test which we have run on it, let take a look on test score :-

AnTuTu :- 36513

NeNa Mark2 :- 57.2fps

Quadrant :- 20956

Mutli Touch :- 10

Final Verdict on Asus ZenFone Selfie :-

Asus ZenFone Selfie is a great addition to sub-20K category and boost the competition to new level, it do provide some nice competition to some of the popular smartphone’s like Xiaomi Mi4, OnePlus One, and its own sibling Asus ZenFone 2 (Review).

The front facing camera is certainly its USP and with this Asus is trying to make its stand out in the over flooded crowd. We do have some complaints with device but they are not such which put this phone down.

Pros :-

• Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection
• Laser auto focus
• Powerful front facing camera
• Good battery life
• Nicely priced

Cons :-

• Lots of bloatwares
• Big device
• Awkward position of power button
• No quick charging support