Asus has held the Zenfone 3 series in Beijing on September 20, officially introducing Asus Zenfone 3 series in China. In the series, Asus Zenfone 3 Ultra is the most powerful and most attractive, but Asus Zenfone 3 is also the one which is very affordable. So we will make the review about Asus Zenfone 3 for you.
Asus Zenfone 3 uses dual 2.5D glass and middle frame design, compared with Zenfone 3 Deluxe, it is full of business and more fashionable and younger. Now we test the moonlight white version.
Due to the back sensor, the main camera must stand out, the round metal frame and the rectangular fingerprint scanner to show the beauty, there is also a concentric circle on the back glass.
Just look the camera carefully, it shows symmetry, the left is laser focus, the right is dual tone LED flash light, lower part is the rectangular fingerprint scanner.
The top is receiver, sensor, and front camera, and under the screen, it still uses the traditional virtual buttons.
The right side has a power button and volume button.
There is only a SIM card slot on the left side.
There is a 3.5mm earphone jack and MIC on the top, and microphone, USB Type C port and speaker at the bottom, in order to keep the signal strength, there are two antenna on the top and bottom.
In all, Zenfone 3 has processed well in its craftsmanship, 2.5d glass and metal frame, good details. As for its appearance, it will differ from person to person.
Performance and OS
Zenfone 3 is powered by Snapdragon 625 Octa core 2.0GHz 14nm processor, compared with Snapdragon 810 and Snapdragon 652, it has gap in their single core, but according to Geekbench 3 or Geekbench 4, the multi-core performance is the highest in this three processor.
Meanwhile, Zenfone 3 is built in EMMC 64GB ROM, the reading speed and written speed makes us satisfied, beside the written speed at random is a little slow. But compared with other models with eMMC, the advantage is quite big.
Zenfone 3 Chinese version uses customized UI, based on Android6.0.1, instead of the original OS in Overseas version.
The biggest change of Zenfone 3 is the speed which is more fluent and faster. As we mention before, Snapdragon 625 processor is more powerful than we expected. And RAM 4GB can run many apps very fast.
Of course, the screen has added the filter blue light for eye protection mode. We can use customize the mode we like. Its UI provides us with personalized and comfortable experience.
Camera
Asus Zenfone 3 has improved its camera with PixelMaxter 3.0, compared with other series. Although Zenfone 3 hasn’t used IMX318 first, but it comes with IMX298 CMOS, 16MP camera, f/2.0 aperture, and TriTech focus technology. In automatic mode, the photographing experience is quite good, the focus and storing are quite fast, adding OIS and EIS function, the image quality is quite high, even opening HDR.
Asus Zenfone 3 also preinstalled the multi shooting mode, besides the common manual, automatic, HDR Pro mode, it can support shooting 64 million ultra clear quality, strengthen the depth of field blurring, miniature, , time-lapse photography and other 20 kinds of options.
ZenFone 3 viewing angle is large a little than iPhone 7, which can shoot more scene, in this set of samples, iphone 7 shows white balance more clearly, and the picture purity and glare control better. Zenfone 3 sample looks a little red, showing the warm color more.
After enlarging the details, Zenfone 3 sample is not so clear as iphone 7 in purity. Maybe under auto mode, it is over exposed.
But Asus Zenfone 3 provides OS updating to show better camera. Under Auto mode, its over exposed situation has been controlled. The purity becomes better, in some scene, the white balance is better than iPhone 7, but the analyst needs to be improved.
Zenfone 3 has more powerful function in manual mode, for example, it can realize white balance, exposure compensation, ISO, fast shutter speed, etc. it also supports focusing manually.
Under manual mode, Zenfone 3 shows more excellent white balance, and the light restoring more accurately without losing any details. Although iphone 7 has higher brightness of picture, the noise control is stronger a little than Zenfone 3.
Night Sample
At night, choosing manual mode will be better, but in auto mode samples, Zenfone 3 white balance is not better than iphone 7. In manual mode, the white balance and other lights restoring are better than iPhone 7. But in dark part, it lost details. Zenfone 3 image purity is not better than iphone 7. But we recommend that under low light, in order to shoot the real scene, please use manual mode, but if you want to see more details, please choose auto mode. Under the dim light, iphone 7 and Zenfone 3 both will improve its brightness to show more details about the scene.
Battery
Zenfone 3 is built in 3,000mAh battery, after 3 hours test, it has 73% off, compared with iphone 7, they are even, compared with Xiaomi MI5, S7 edge, it has a little gap, but it has beaten Huawei P9 and Meizu Pro 6.
Thanks to Soc, Zenfone 3 standby time is quite good, it only spends 1% to 2% in 6 hours.
After running large games, we test the temperature, the highest temperature on the front is 36.7 degree Celsius , the back is up to 38 degree Celsius, but not as hot as other smartphones.
Conclusion
Asus Zenfone 3 can perform quite well to use Snapdragon 625 processor, although someone thinks it’s not enough, you may not be happy with the back design, but the rectangular fingerprint scanner makes you surprise. Although the auto mode is not perfect to take pictures, the manual mode can be a good solution. Right now you can enjoy coupon code ZenFonGB to catch it at $348.99 for three colors.