Early Thoughts: Asus Zenfone 2
Sleek, premium designed exteriors, blazing fast interiors, jaw dropping camera. All of these things come to mind when you think of your dream smartphone. But these phones come with a price tag to match. Budget-conscious phones normally sacrifice one or more of these things in order to bring the price tag down. But phones like the Nexus 5, Moto G, and OnePlus One have shown that you can have a good to great experience on a budget conscious phone. Not everyone has more than five hundred bucks to toss around for a new phone, so cheaper phones are their best choice. Enter the Asus Zenfone 2
The Asus Zenfone 2 is a budget conscious phone that, on paper, claims to have no compromises. With an Intel SoC, 13 megapixel camera(that touts phenomenal low light use), and great design. How will the Asus Zenfone 2 stack up against other budget phones and perform day in and day out. There will surely be plenty to uncover in the time I have with the Zenfone 2. Here are my early thoughts of the budget friendly Asus phone.
The Asus Zenfone 2 has a 5.5 inch 1080p display. The display itself gets quite bright, and colors look pretty good so far. The phone is not made of premium materials. The back is a faux metal that’s actually plastic. But hey, it’s a $200–300 phone. It’s actually nearly identical in size to the OnePlus One, another $300 phone. The Asus Zenfone 2 is just a little bit taller and perceivably thicker due to the contoured back.
The Zenfone 2 has hardware buttons. Which I’m not fond of normally, unless they are done right. Here, they aren’t. The hardware buttons don’t light up, making it incredibly frustrating to navigate in the dark. Another confusing choice is having the volume buttons on the back of the device, and the power button on the top of the device. That makes for a confusing and sometimes frustrating experience having them so drastically separated.
Asus skins Android heavily, incredibly so. It’s worse than TouchWiz. Let that sink in for a minute.
The Asus Zenfone 2 ships with a 13MP sensor. The sensor is from Toshiba. Last time I checked, Toshiba wasn’t that great at camera sensors. So there’s that.
