At the IFA conference in early September, ASUS launched three extended models of ZenFone2 at one go. Among them, ZenFone Selfie takes selfie as its selling point and provides a front and rear dual 13 megapixel camera and flash in a frenzy configuration. Now let's take a look at the performance of this new machine.
parameter
152.5 x 77.2 x 3.9-10.8mm，170g
5.5 inch 1080P IPS screen (403PPI, 400 niter brightness), gorilla generation 4 glass and anti fingerprint coating
Snapdragon 615+3G memory+32G ROM, supporting up to 128G TF card expansion
Front 13 megapixel sensor, f2.2 aperture, 88 ° ultra wide angle, dual color temperature flash
Rear 13 million pixel sensor, f2.0 aperture, laser focusing, dual color temperature flash, the nearest macro distance of 6cm, weak light mode, backlight Super HDR, 4 times brightness and contrast, black screen gesture photography
ZenUI based on Android 5.0
3000mAh battery, replaceable back cover and battery
Mobile Unicom dual card dual standby dual 4G
Appearance and workmanship
The classic packaging of ZenFone2 series, trapezoidal drawer design, and the product features under the side holes.
Accessories include instructions, charger and data cable.
The charger is small, but its output is only 5.2V/1A. The machine used for 3000mAh battery will be slow. It is recommended to use 5V/2A charger everyday.
The fuselage design is highly coincident with ZenFone2, with a full black panel on the front and a full arc removable rear cover on the back. The arc back cover made of frosted material is very comfortable to touch and has good fingerprint resistance.
The 13 million pixel front camera in the center of the forehead is the most prominent feature of the whole machine. Its left side is a dual color temperature flash lamp, the right side is a vertically placed receiver, and there are hidden light sensors and status indicators on both sides.
The chin has Zenfone series concentric circles and three King Kong touch buttons.
The left side of the camera is a laser focusing sensor, the right side is a dual color temperature flash lamp, and the lower side is a volume button with concentric circles. The design of the back button is only used by ASUS and LG.
Below is a whole row of speaker openings, and the speaker itself is opened on the right.
From left to right on the top are noise reduction microphones, power keys with concentric circular grooves, and headphone connectors.
At the bottom are the microphone and micro USB connectors.
The volume button on the back and the power button on the top make both sides of the body very clean. Only the right frame has a cover opening slot.
The back cover and battery of the machine are detachable. Now only ASUS and LG can adhere to this design. The machine uses dual Micro SIM card slots, and TF card can also be inserted above the No. 1 card slot.
Officially, white/red/pink/pink/blue/gold/gray frosted back cover and diamond back cover on Zenfone2 are provided.
Under different angles, the back cover of the diamond will have different reflective lines, and the touch feel is also quite unique. It is estimated that many cute spots of sister paper will be poked.
The weight and feel of the machine are very similar to those of Zenfone2. Although the machine is relatively large, the full arc back cover and rounded corners have a good grip feel.
screen
ZenFone Selfie adopts 5.5 inch 1080P full fit screen, 403PPI, official logo maximum brightness 400 nits, 71% NTSC color gamut. We found the MX5 with the same resolution of 5.5 inches 1080P and the red rice Note2 for comparison. The MX5 is an AMOLED screen.
In the default screen mode, the maximum brightness of ZenFone Selfie is 375 nits, higher than 341 in Red Rice Note2 and 328 nits in MX5. It can also be visible in the sun.
The uniform 100% brightness displays white, and ZenFone Selfie's hair color is slightly yellow, which is close to the standard color temperature; The red rice Note2 is slightly red, with obvious uneven brightness at the top, bottom and left; In fact, the MX5 is seriously yellow, but the special filter of screen A causes it to appear red in front of the lens.
On the black display, the A screen of the MX5 is almost truly non luminous, with the best performance; However, the brightness of ZenFone Selfie cannot be suppressed, and the light distribution is uneven to a certain extent.
In the three primary colors display, ZenFone Selfie's performance is very similar to that of the red rice Note2, and the A screen of the MX5 is naturally more bright.
Displays color pictures. ZenFone Selfie's performance should be more elegant and slightly yellow, and the details of the dark field should be more abundant than that of the red rice note (the last sunset proof).
Large side angle
Death diagonal
From the visual angle, ZenFone Selfie performs well, with less brightness attenuation and no obvious color deviation at large angles. Red rice Note2 showed a significant brightness decline at a large side angle, while the diagonal position showed a certain degree of blue; The MX5 will show obvious color changes with the change of angle, which is a bit exaggerated.
In conclusion, the screen performance of ZenFone Selfie is relatively balanced, and there is no obvious weakness. Of course, in this era, there is still not much difference in the performance of normal IPS screens. The only thing to note is that the minimum brightness of the system is higher than that of ordinary models, and it may be bright when used in dark places.
System UI
The machine is equipped with ZenUI based on Android 5.0.2, which should be the most customized Android system outside the mainland. Its system completion and function depth have surpassed many domestic customized ROMs and are close to MIUI. The author thinks highly of it. In a word, it is a mixture of MIUI and flyme from Taiwan.
The desktop provides a double-layer desktop (with application drawers) and a single-layer desktop mode that domestic users are accustomed to for self switching.
Draw up and down to call up the setting menu/notice bar, apply automatic classification, and even select wallpaper and desktop plug-in transparency, folder style, text font/size/color.
The shortcut button icon in the notice bar is huge, and the calculator, power saving and acceleration, auto start management, blue light filtering, etc. are relatively rare designs.
The system's own applications uniformly follow the Android specification, which even MIUI fails to do.
Its tool applications are very complete, including to-do notes, handwritten notes, even mirrors (front camera of mirror), laser rulers (laser focusing sensors are used to measure the distance from objects with relatively high accuracy), and there is basically no need to install third-party applications.
It has the best color temperature adjustment option for the time being, native support for call recording, and rare call duration statistics.
At the same time, it comes with the elderly and children mode, as well as the one handed mode activated by double clicking the home key.
The functions of the rest screen gesture (drawing patterns under the rest screen to directly open different applications), double click lock screen/light screen, etc. in China are renamed as Zen gestures in ZenUI.
It is very suitable for the national conditions of the mainland. There are four King Kong, namely, "power saving management, automatic startup, notification shielding, and flow management", which are used without any violation. However, the bootstrap management of this version is more radical than the green daemon, and some background download processes will also be killed. I hope that subsequent versions can increase the cleaning time.
Performance and smoothness
In terms of performance, ZenFone Selfie adopts Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 (4-core 1.0GHz+4-core 1.5GHz A53 architecture)+3G memory+32G ROM, which supports up to 128G TF card expansion.
We choose HTC D820 which is also suitable for Snapdragon 615, Meilan Note which uses MT6752, and Samsung Galaxy A5 which uses Snapdragon 410 as comparison.
CPU computing ability test
GPU graphics performance test
Flash memory read/write speed test
The performance of ZenFone Selfie is basically in line with the performance of Snapdragon 615. The running score performance and the HTC D820 of SoC will win or lose each other. Although it will certainly be weaker than the MT6752 on the first generation of Meizu Zhen flagship Meilan Note1, it will be higher than the Snapdragon 410.
It is worth noting that this Snapdragon 615 is equipped with a fairly fast flash memory chip, its reading performance is significantly different from its peers, and it will have obvious hardware advantages in daily applications and the opening speed of large games.
In daily use, the smoothness of the machine is relatively high, and the GPU curve is also very beautiful (if the curve does not exceed the green line, it means that the frame number is above 60, and the lower the position, the better the smoothness). It is exaggerated that the speed of the machine has not been significantly affected by the continuous installation of 20 applications. If not specifically stated, it is difficult to detect that the machine uses Snapdragon 615.
Photo experience
The front and rear cameras of ZenFone Selfie are 13 million pixels, with a front aperture of 2.0 and a laser focusing module.
The photographing interface of the machine is simple, with independent photographing and video recording buttons, and an in-line setting menu.
Asustek's PixelMaster photography technology, in addition to being used in the post proof algorithm, has also been made into 17 modes. Ultra clear picture quality, depth of field mode, ultra weak light mode, slow motion, etc., almost cover the photography functions that have appeared in the industry.
In addition, its function implementation mode is rare. Today's mobile phone cameras generally have two design ideas, one is the advanced automatic mode represented by Apple Samsung, and the other is the multi-mode idea represented by domestic models.
Asustek, on the other hand, is a manufacturer in the middle. Its camera can automatically recognize the scene and pop up the recommended photo mode. The author still supports this design, which can avoid automatic mode judgment errors and effectively shorten the time of mode switching.
In the depth of field mode, the machine will automatically take two pictures of the distant focus, and can adjust the degree of background virtualization.
The left side of the above figure shows the time tracing, and the right side shows the intelligent background deletion mode. The former is similar to the iPhone's LivePhoto, which will automatically capture the image 2 seconds before pressing the shutter for high-speed motion capture; The latter is used to clean up passers-by in the process of taking photos.
The machine has its own professional mode, which can adjust the white balance/exposure compensation/ISO/shutter speed in detail. The most impressive thing is that the exposure time can be adjusted to 32 seconds at most. It is not a problem to shoot stars with long exposure.
Imaging effect
The machine will enable laser focusing at a close distance of about 50cm, which is characterized by ensuring the focusing speed and accuracy no matter how dark the scene is. In daily use, the focusing speed and imaging speed of the machine are fast. In addition, after the machine takes a photo, it will carry out in machine processing in the background. It is not necessary to stay in a fixed position all the time. After turning on the night view or HDR mode, the use experience will not be greatly affected.
The automatic metering and white balance of the machine are more accurate and stable than most domestic machines. The whole film is slightly warm and yellow, and the large aperture of f2.0 brings about a good virtualization effect.
Normal light sample
Weak light proof sheet
Extremely weak light proof sheet
In extremely weak light, the machine can also maintain correct light measurement and take samples slightly higher than what the naked eye can see. When the night view mode is turned on, the image quality will be significantly improved. However, the lens glare is relatively obvious, so you need to avoid strong point light sources when taking photos.
100% enlarged screenshot of the sample
In terms of discrimination, it belongs to the normal level of 13 million pixels, and the details of florets in macro can also be fully displayed.
Automatic mode on the left and HDR mode on the right
After HDR mode is turned on, although the white balance will appear a certain degree of green, the effect is quite obvious, and the dark details can be seen at a glance, and there is no ghosting phenomenon.
The left is the automatic mode, and the right is the ultra clear mode
The composition time of the ultra clear mode is about 5 seconds, but in addition to adding picture details, it also has a powerful sharpening algorithm. The sharpness of the sample has been improved by several levels, and it is worth opening in the big group photos or landscape photos that need discrimination.
The left is the rear camera sample, and the right is the front camera sample
The front and rear 13 megapixel cameras are an important selling point of ZenFone Selfie, but I never expected ASUS to be equipped with almost the same camera. The imaging/wide-angle range and discrimination of the front and rear cameras are very close, which is a very violent configuration in the front camera.
On the left is the sample of iPhone 6s, and on the right is the sample of ZenFone Selfie
Automatic mode on the left, beauty mode on the right
In fact, even if the iPhone 6s has been upgraded to 5 million pixels in front, its wide angle range and detailed performance are still beaten by the 13 million pixels of ZenFone Selfie.
Its open hanging beauty mode improves the brightness of the face in one breath and carries out appropriate skin grinding treatment. It also changes the white balance of the proof, making the skin color of the characters more natural and the effect is quite obvious. What's more frightening is that its self portrait mode can manually control the effects of thin face/skin abrasion/big eyes, and even support the manual mode... The front camera can be comparable to it, I'm afraid that there is only a Meitu mobile phone.
Endurance&fever
The ZenFone Selfie battery capacity is 3000mAh, which is the most common battery capacity for 5.5 inch models, but the CPU part uses Snapdragon 615, which is not expected by the author. However, thanks to system optimization and aggressive background management, the battery of the machine feels unexpectedly durable, and its endurance is better than that of Xiaomi Note and Note5 of the same capacity.
The ambient temperature is 29.8 degrees. After 30 minutes of large-scale games, the highest temperature on the front appears at the lower right of the camera, 41.8 degrees, and the highest temperature on the back is 40.9 degrees. As the Snapdragon 615 model, this performance is quite cool.
summary
As designed, ZenFone Selfie's front camera is quite amazing, plus the rare front dual color temperature flash, which enables it to provide almost "all-weather" self photographing capability. And the good system optimization has brought the performance of the same generation Snapdragon 615 model in terms of smoothness and endurance.
In terms of price, the machine has not been officially sold in the mainland, but at the price of 6990 Taiwan dollars (equivalent to 1400 yuan), including 17% domestic consumption tax, the price of the machine is estimated to be around 1600. It sounds like a low price performance ratio. However, in front of Meitu with 2000 yuan and poor fluency, and N3 with 3000 yuan, it has become the most cost-effective and available selfie model
