Top notch from Asus!
Asus entered the huge Indian smartphone market with three new devices which were a great offering at their own price segments. The Zenfone 4, 5 and 6 which were respectively INR 5999, INR 12999 and INR 16999. All these phones boasted their amazing specs at their respective price points. Zenfone 5 being priced perfectly at the target segment of most successful phones namely Moto G and Moto G 2nd gen and others, The Zenfone 5 managed to grab a quite good market share from the rivals. Quite good share of all attention of Asus was due to Zenfone 5. But their product for the higher price range that is the Zenfone 6 had a pretty good offering at the price point as well. In this article we discuss about the Zenfone 6 in detail.
Design
The basic design philosophy of all Asus smartphones are the same with plastic body and matte finish on the back. The plastic feel on a INR 16999 phone is not desirable, but still it manages to get a feel of good quality and look. The extra metal added provides sturdiness for the design and protection. The feel of the phone in hand is quite premium due to its matte finishing. The front of the screen is a 6 inch display with fairly large bezels at the edges. The 6 inch screen might be a turn off for ergonomic feel. The monster display of the Zenfone 6 is quite wide but we thought it would be better to be longer rather than wider. The phablet is about 9.9 mm thick. The huge size of the phablet demands use of two hands for operation. There are capacitive buttons at the bottom just above the metallic strip which has become a signature style of Asus smartphones. The earpiece and front camera are placed at comfortable positions above the screen. The microphone and the micro USB port for charging and data sync is given at the bottom. On the rear side there is camera and flash. The rear cover is removable however, the battery is non removable.
Hardware and Software
As far as the specifications are concerned the Zenfone 6 is spec heavy and has all reasons to boast about itself. It has an Intel Atom Z2580 dual-core SoC clocked at 2 GHz with Hyper threading technology which manages to get the users a seamless smooth experience. This processor is more powerful than the Z2560 inside the ZenFone 5. A PowerVR 544MP2 clocked at 533MHz provides the juice for graphics. The phablet also has 2GB of RAM. Asus provides 16GB of internal storage, of which only 12.2GB is available to use. This can be extended to up to 64GB using micro SD cards. The phablet runs on Android Jelly Bean 4.3 out of the box. And as per Asus, the devices will be given the software upgrades as soon as possible. The phablet becomes a bit sluggish when running high resource eating apps. But the upgrade to KitKat and Lollipop will definitely get true flawless experience from the device.
Camera
The camera on the phablet is of 13 MPix which does fairly good in capturing images. However under low light conditions the snaps become miserable. Lot of blur was observed in the snap if the light conditions are not proper. In good sunlight we had good snaps but still on zooming we found it satisfactory at its best. Few filters and options are provided for customizing the photos which the pro users can tamper. Options for multiple shooting has also been provided in the device. Asus has innovated with its Selfie mode, in which the rear camera can focus on as many as four faces and capture an image automatically. It worked flawlessly every time. The camera is also capab;e of shooting 1080p videos, but it also suffers from exposure issues.
Battery
In our battery test, the high capacity 3300mAh battery inside this phablet lasted us around 11 hours. This is in tune with our regular usage experience, where the phablet lasted us at least a day and a half, which involved around a good mix of gaming, web browsing, calls, texting and listening to music. In our call tests, the phone managed to hold on to the signal even in areas notorious for network congestion which was an utterly great performance.
Performance
Asus Zenfone 6 is a decent performer for daily user. But when it comes to heavy resource consuming apps the phone tends to be bit sluggish. Apps open and close rather quickly. Most games work fine, but graphics intense games like GT Racing 2 and Shadowgun stutter and feel laggish at times.
Web browsing is a really blazing experience on any connection, which is confirmed by the SunSpider score of 750 ms. In CPU performance tests like AnTuTu and Quadrant, the ZenFone 6 scored 22,503 and 10,357 respectively. Even 3DMark Ice Storm and GFXbench had scores of 8181 and 20 fps respectively. All the numbers are really good compared to other phablets in the same price range.
The video playback in the phablet is a delight. The speaker on the phone is not too loud but sufficient enough. The earphones provided along with the smartphone are of very decent quality and give amazing reproduction of voice and does good work in cancellation of outside noise.
Gizmo Verdict
Asus Zenfone 6 comes for INR 16,999 which is the best mid range affordable phablet. If you like to click pictures this is the smartphone you should have with a huge 6-inch display. Check the video review of Asus Zenfone 6.
