Last year Asus jumped into smartphone business by launching couple of devices like Asus Zenfone 4 (Review), Asus Zenfone 5 (Review) and Asus Zenfone 6 (Review), company was able to sell good number of units, even they had sold more than their expectations. Later company has launched more variants and they were just became launches only. This year company launched another smartphone, the Asus ZenFone 2 (First Impression | Review) which was the world’s first smartphone with 4Gigs of RAM.
Last month company has launched couple of devices like Asus ZenFone 2 Laser ZE500KL (Review), ZenFone 2 Laser ZE550KL (Review), Asus ZenFone Selfie (Review), and Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe, these devices are build on top of the ZenFone 2 and company has made some changes on each of them and now treating them as separate devices.
Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe is purely ZenFone 2 in term of design, build and specs, rather company has introduced just one thing here and it is the back panel which has diamond cut design, yes that’s what company is calling it. So let start our review and see what it has got.
Build And Design Of Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe :-
When it comes to design and build then like other devices, this one too has no big difference when compared with Asus ZenFone 2, it has same build quality, and same design, however the back panel do add more value to the phone and now it feels more solid and sturdy in hand. It has plastic back panel with cutted polygons designs which gives unique yet nice look, when you tilt the phone a little then you will find that patterns are changing colors which looks very nice and gives extra look to the device.
However there is other side of story as well, it do feel weird when you hold it in your hand, and most of the time it feels something scratching your hand while you are holding it in your hand.
When it comes to connectivity and ports then just like ZenFone 2, Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe dont have any buttons on either side, at bottom you will find your Micro USB port for charging and data transfer and there is also a primary mic.
At top you will find your secondary mic for noise cancellation along with 3.5mm audio jack for your headphone and power and sleep button, here company hasn’t learned from its past mistakes and again put power and sleep button on top which is one of the awkward position.
At rear you will find your 13MP rear snapper with dual tone flash and volume rockers, it seems to be a nice place for volume buttons as they are easy to reach.
At front you have your 5.5 inch full HD screen which is protected by corning gorilla glass 3, above display you have 5MP front facing camera, nice metallic earpiece and some sensors.
Just below display screen you will find your three touch capacitive buttons and metallic chin, I don’t know why company is not learning from its mistakes which they had made on ZenFone 2 and provided off screen buttons and chin which does nothing but increases the size of device.
The back panel of this device can be removed but you wont be able to remove its battery as its sealed inside, once you remove back panel you will get access to dual SIM slots and a Micro SD card slot.
Hardware And Specifications Of Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe :-
When it comes to under the hood features then again it has got same thing which we had seen on Asus ZenFone 2, it is powered an Intel Atom Z3580 quad-core 64-bit processor clocked at 2.3GHz along with PowerVR G6430 GPU and 4GB of RAM. For connectivity it has got dual-SIM card slots, 4G LTE support, WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0, Micro USB and GPS.
Display Of Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe :-
Here as well Asus has kept things same, which means you will get an 5.5inch Full HD display screen which is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3, I wish it could be Gorilla Glass 4 which we had seen on Asus ZenFone 2 Laser and ZenFone Selfie.
In our test we found that Asus has improved display a bit and now its more deeper and sharper which provides better viewing angles, color reproduction now looks more nicer on it, and its because Asus has improved the brightness level on it.
Software Of Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe :-
Just like other smartphone’s in ZenFone series, this Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe too runs on Android 5.0.2 which company has heavily customized and added 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.
Like I had already told you, Asus has placed its power button at the top, which is one of the awkward position, thankfully ZenUI support double tap to wake which make things more easy. You can up to 7 home screen on Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe.
Camera Of Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe :-
Again story remains the same, at least on paper you will get 13MP rear snapper with dual tone flash, but in our test the camera on Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe is slightly better than ZenFone 2, low lights images looks good, macro shoots also look nice on screen and yes focusing speed has been improved as well, these things can only be seen when you try notice them closely.
The camera UI is one of the good thing which you will get, its loaded with tons on features and filters you can use, there are lots of modes as well which allows you to click images according to them.
Rear camera is capable of taking full HD videos at 1080p and even if your hands shakes then software will adjust and you will get stable video, but lack of optical image stabilization can be seen as software alone cant do much many times.
Front facing is the same, it 5MP camera which takes decent selfies and allows you to do decent video calls.
Camera Samples :-
(HDR)
Battery On Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe :-
Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe comes with same 3000mAh battery which is decent and provide around a day of battery backup if you are an average user, we were able to get 11 hours of back with three mails accounts, WiFi was on most of the times, automatic brightness, played some games, watched YouTube videos and made some calls, which is bit low.
Performance of Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe :-
In clear words I would say Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe is a very powerful device, its a perfect combination of quad-core Intel Z3580 Atom SoC and 4GB RAM, it can handle almost anything without any problem.
Many times we had around 20-25 apps running in background and we were playing games on it and the best part is that we didn’t faced any lag on game, and even while using it like this we didn’t faced any abnormal heating over the device.
All thanks to the PowerVR G6430 GPU which handles HD games very easily and graphics looks very sharp on screen, yes we did noticed some frame drops but its not a major issue.
Here are some benchmark test for you :-
AnTuTu :- 45220
Quadrant Standard :- 12450
Multi Touch :- 10
NeNa Mark2 :- 59.7fps
Final Verdict On Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe :-
No doubt Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe comes with powerful under the hood features and if you love to play games and do heavy multi tasking then its the device for you, but battery life and display could be better.
It comes with a new design back panel which do gives a nice and make it stand out in crowd but this design is still behind of Xiaomi and OnePlus devices.
