I already encountered the Asus Zenfone 5 last July during it’s teaser event. The official launch happened then you may saw some of it’s reviews from other local tech blogs but most or all of them are in Android Jellybean at that time.
That’s why I chose to wait until the 2 important updates came in, the USB OTG capability and the Android Kitkat. Bonus that Asus Philippines provided my review unit so here it is, the first or probably the one of the very few Asus Zenfone 5 with Android Kitkat and flip cover.There’s no unboxing on this one as I was only provided by the unit itself so I used some 3rd party 1A charger and the stock earphone of another smartphone.that I usually have in my past battery on video test
Flip Cover:
For this review, I got the one with 8 GB ROM and 2 GB RAM. For now, I’m gonna show you more of the functions of the flip cover. If you have music on the background, that will be the additional 4th page of the circular window after the time, basic notifications and temperature. In time page you can choose either the analog or the digital time. As long as you will properly close the flip cover, the window mode will go on nice and smooth
Main menu and app drawer, quick settings, phone and messaging
The Zen UI that I encountered on the Jellybean continues on the Kitkat version but with more fluidity to the point that I felt that I’m gliding my fingers on a silk cloth. The phone and messaging apps are still the same. Sending texts is easy and call clarity is very good. The quick settings menu (when you slide down the window) is one of the best that I saw so far in and Android phone mainly of the screen brightness adjustment on the fly, RAM boost plus you can customize the 15 spots that you can put in which you can’t do on a normal stock Android.
Music
The UI reminds me of the stock music player but replace the main colors with cream and mint green which is a refreshing take to my eyes. The equalizer really works wonders into my Xiaomi Pistons in-ear headphones. Yes, it’s a giveaway that this smartphone is CTIA-complaiant
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Gaming
I chose NBA 2K14 for this test as one of my fellow tech bloggers also had this game with his past review with the Jellybean Zenfone 5 at that time for comparison purposes. I chose 3 modes, two on smart saving mode (Ultra power saving and optimized) and no smart saving feature at all. As expected, it ran more smoothly by just a little bit over the 2 modes on smart saving feature. There are some frameskips but the one that I can’t be pleased is sometimes the player will be in a bit fast forward mode, something that might complain on the GPU.
Benchmarks:
I already had some benchmarks from it’s Jellybean version but I’m curious now that it is now on Kitkat so here it is
Camera:
The Pixelmaster camera is one of the heavy features of the Zenfone series. I didn’t include the front camera samples as I focused more on some of the 18 camera modes that you can check. I love the low light mode (even though that the camera quality will go down to 2MP) and the dept of field feature. The only thing that I complain is the bit slow shutter speed. Yup, there is the turbo mode which is a bit faster in taking pics (that function is more for the burst mode but you can take a single shot) but you can’t fully utilize the full 8 MP main sensor
Asus Zenfone 5 8 MP camera sample
Depth of field camera sample
HDR camera sample
Low light mode camera sample
Night camera sample
Miniature camera sample
Panorama camera sample
Battery:
While I’m waiting for the KK update, I already saw random posts of some Zenfone 5 users complaints and even some international blogs for it’not-so-good battery life. I hope that the new OS will ease the pain but based on my battery video rundown test (usings MYX Player, stock earphones of a local smartphone, 25% phone brightness, 1 sim on 2G/3G mode, no Bluetooth/WiFi/GPS/3G data, 10 out of 15 brightness and 15 out of 15 volume on MX Player) from 100% to 3% battery life, the Zenfone 5 only managed to about 5 hours and 40 minutes. It’s more evident in my usual daily smartphone activities like music, video, browsing, taking pics and vids, blogging that I can only manage it at 12 hours on optimized Smart Saving mode.
Random:
I personally encountered some of it’s incompatibility issues on some apps. One of those is my go-to browser which is the Opera Mini. After 4 websites, it will have some problems connecting to the next site/page even that my 3G data signal is at full throttle. When I used the stock browser, it works fine by logging on the same site that I was about to surf on the Opera Mini
Verdict:
Pros – Same Zen UI smoothness even more with Android Kitkat, Zen UI, nice audio both on music and video, USB OTG, Pixelmaster Camera
Cons- Battery life, slow camera shutter speed, not that ready on some heavy games
For me, the Asus Zenfone 5 has lots of unique features that no one from competition at the same price range does have but the weaknesses to this nice, bang-for-the-buck phone especially the battery life really gave me some concern even that it has a new OS which is really a big deal in any Android device. I’ll give the Asus Zenfone 5 a 3.75 out of 5
