On September 20, ASUS held a new product launch conference for the "3" series in Beijing, officially introducing the Zenfone 3 series into the domestic market. After completing the international debut of Snapdragon 821, ASUS achieved the domestic market debut. Of the four models in the Zenfone 3 series, the flagship Zunjue version is the most eye-catching, but even the most "low-end" Smart version can not be underestimated, so this time we will first give you a detailed evaluation of the Zenfone 3 Smart version.

Appearance and workmanship

Unlike the Zunjue version, which uses a metal body, the Zenfone 3 Smart version is designed with double-sided 2.5D glass and a metal middle frame. Compared with the Zunjue version, which has a strong business atmosphere, the Smart version is more fashionable and younger, in line with its positioning. The color of the evaluation prototype obtained this time is moonlight white, so the separation of the three parts of the front face is more obvious, and the sapphire blue will be more rounded, which is amazing.

Due to the sensor behind, the rear camera is inevitably prominent. Asustek has not lost its efforts in this part. The round metal protective frame with rectangular fingerprint recognition attempts to express a sense of mechanical beauty. At the same time, the classic concentric circular lines of the Zenfone series were carved under the glass. After all, aesthetics vary from person to person. Maybe you can't accept this design language, but ASUS has done a lot of work behind it.

Take a closer look at the camera part. It is a very symmetrical design. On the left side is laser assisted focusing, and on the right side is a dual color temperature flash lamp. The fingerprint identification below is not a circular design, but a rectangular design. At the beginning, I was very puzzled about why ASUS had to design a rectangle for fingerprint recognition. But after I got started, I found that the rectangle is more suitable for fingers than the general rear circular fingerprint recognition. With the super fast recognition speed, the index finger can be unlocked with a single press (Users can also use the middle finger if they like) The whole experience is more advanced than that of the model with circular rear fingerprint identification.

The top earpiece, sensor and front camera are on the same axis. Because the front panel is white, the opening is obvious. The chin follows the consistent touch button tradition of the Zenfone series. The layout follows Google's specifications, with the return key on the left and multi task on the right.

The right side of the fuselage is equipped with a power key and a volume key. The two physical keys have carved lines. The small "X" style is very obvious. Compared with the Zenfone Pegasus 3, the handle is not one or two levels higher, and the key program setting is also reasonable. At the same time, it is rare to add a logo next to the power key, which is too considerate for users (laugh).

On the left side, there is only one SIM card slot, which is a common and/or design. At the same time, the card slot is also marked with SIM1, SIM2/microSD to facilitate user identification, and the foolproof design ensures that the card slot is not easily damaged during use.

The top of the body is 3.5mm headphone hole and noise reduction microphone, and the bottom is microphone, USB Type-C interface and speaker in turn. Even if Type-C interface is equipped, ASUS has completely abandoned headphone hole as a "trend" and has not followed. In order to ensure the signal strength, there are two antenna separation strips at the top and bottom.

In general, Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is excellent in workmanship. The transition between 2.5D glass and metal frame is smooth and natural, and the details are well handled; There is no doubt that the design of rectangular fingerprint recognition is highly practical.

Screen quality

Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is equipped with a 5.5 inch 1080P IPS screen with a viewing angle of 178 degrees. The official said that the maximum brightness is 600 nits. The test data shows that the maximum brightness is 582.3 nits, the contrast is 1186:1, the minimum brightness is below 1 nit, and the measured color gamut covers 91.7% of sRGB.  

The color temperature is about 7460K, which is slightly cooler in line with the domestic aesthetic. The average DeltaE is 3.5 and the maximum DeltaE is 10.3 in the 104 color standard test. It is worth mentioning that ASUS has added a blue light filtering eye protection mode similar to Apple's Night Shift in screen settings, which can better protect users' eyesight.

Performance and system

Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is not radical in the choice of SoC. It uses the 2.0GHz eight core Snapdragon 625 with a 14nm process. Due to the difference in architecture between the previous generation flagship Snapdragon 810 and the Snapdragon 652 in the same period, its single core performance is somewhat different. However, its multi-core performance is the highest in the GeekBench 3 or GeekBench 4 tests. In addition to ASUS's full frequency scheduling on the Zenfone 3 Smart Edition, the Snapdragon 625's performance on the Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is much better than expected. It's a little pity that its GPU Adreno 506 is somewhat powerless when facing large games.

At the same time, Zenfone 3 Smart Edition uses a lot of materials on the built-in eMMC 64GB storage. In addition to the slow speed of random writing, the speed of continuous reading and writing is satisfactory. Compared with the models that also use eMMC, Zenfone 3 Smart Edition has great advantages, and the speed of random reading is far behind the comparison model.

The system of Zenfone 3 Smart Edition of Bank of China is a customized and easy UI based on Android 6.0.1, not a simplified native system of overseas version, so the whole system logic is improved for consumers in the Chinese market, such as canceling the secondary menu, folder integration and switching, SMS+/earn+, etc. About the system Zenfone Pegasus 3 evaluation As mentioned in, the biggest change of Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is speed - more smooth. As mentioned earlier, the performance of Snapdragon 625 is much stronger than the author expected, and 4GB of running memory is more than enough for various domestic rogue apps.

Of course, although it is the same set of UI, it is not static. For example, the blue light filtering eye protection mode is added to the screen, and users can also customize the preferred mode; Due to the addition of fingerprints, the system also has the use of fingerprints, such as double clicking to start the camera or using it as the capture key, or even forcing you to scan fingerprints before answering an incoming call. These small changes can make users get a more personalized and comfortable experience in their daily life.

Photo performance

A big improvement of ASUS Zenfone 3 series compared with the past is the camera part. The whole series is equipped with PixelMaxter 3.0 as standard. Although the Smart Edition did not debut IMX318 like the Zunjue Edition, it is also equipped with IMX298 CMOS, 16 million pixels, f/2.0 aperture and TriTech triple hybrid focusing technology (laser auto focusing+phase focusing+continuous focusing). The whole photographing experience in automatic mode is quite good. Focusing and storage are very fast. In addition to optical and electronic anti shake, the film rate is high. Even if HDR is turned on, there is no impatient waiting time.

At the same time, ASUS also preset a variety of shooting modes for Zenfone 3 Smart Edition. In addition to the common automatic, manual and HDR Pro modes, there are 20 kinds of options, including 64 million ultra clear image quality, enhanced virtual depth of field effect, miniature model, and delay photography.

Daytime proof sheet

（iPhone 7）

(Zenfone 3 Smart Edition)

The wide-angle of Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is slightly larger than that of iPhone 7, and can capture more scenes. In this group of samples, the white balance of iPhone 7 is more accurate, and the picture purity and glare control are slightly better. The Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is slightly red, which is warmer overall.

After zooming in the samples and comparing the details, the painting of Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is more obvious than that of iPhone 7, which is also the reason why the picture purity is not as good as that of iPhone 7. This may be due to the algorithm, which is somewhat overexposed in automatic mode.

However, Asustek is more interested in it. During the evaluation, it provided the system update of Zenfone 3 Smart Edition, and its photographic performance has reached a new level. The overexposure in the automatic mode has been controlled, the sense of smearing has been further weakened, and the purity of the picture is much better. The white balance in some scenes is better than that of the iPhone 7, but there is still room for improvement in discrimination.

The Zenfone 3 Smart Edition has a more powerful manual mode to achieve a state that can not be reached by the automatic mode. White balance, exposure compensation ISO、 The shutter speed and other different parameters can be adjusted at will, and manual focusing is also included. In contrast, the automatic mode is somewhat weak.

In the manual mode, the white balance of Zenfone 3 Smart Edition proofs is better. The dark scenes can well restore the texture of the sun shining on the metal billboards. In the same way, the light in the scene is more accurate and the details are not lost. Although the iPhone 7 increases the brightness of the image in this scene, the noise control ability is slightly stronger than that of the Zenfone 3 Smart Edition.

Night proof sheet

The manual mode is more useful in the night scene, because the automatic mode will automatically extend the shutter time once it detects that it is in a weak light environment. Basically, it is easy to overexpose when taking pictures at night, and it is not easy to restore the real scene. Although it ensures "shooting", the sample is far from the reality (the sample in the picture is the most extreme situation), and the manual mode is only slightly noisy in such a harsh scene.

The iPhone 7 can also show the light difference of the character signboard by comparing the samples in the automatic mode, and the light projected below can also be seen slightly different. The sample of Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is slightly blue, and the white balance can only be said to be incomplete.

Change to manual mode to fight again. This time, the white balance and the restoration of different lights are better than the iPhone 7, but some details of the dark scene are also lost, with gains and losses. In addition, Zenfone 3 Smart Edition has a "strong" sense of existence, and its image purity is always a little lower than that of iPhone 7. Therefore, the author suggests to use the manual mode to get the effect close to the real scene in the low light environment, but the automatic mode will be more suitable if you want to see more details.

In low light environment, the automatic mode of iPhone 7 and Zenfone 3 Smart Edition will increase the brightness of the image to get more details. Although the manual mode can restore the real scene to the maximum extent, the dark details are really powerless. After all, the hardware bottleneck still exists objectively.

Even though the manual mode tried to restore the situation at that time, its tolerance was still insufficient compared with that of the iPhone. The white balance of iPhone 7 is not accurate in this set of samples, but it is the only one that can show clouds in the sky. After updating the firmware, Zenfone 3 Smart Edition occasionally appears blue when taking backlight photos in automatic mode. Asustek's engineers seem to be very dedicated. I hope that since Asustek has put so much effort into taking photos, it might be better to improve it.

P. S. The contrast samples of iPhone 7 have all been converted into sRGB color profiles.

Endurance and fever

The Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is equipped with a 3000mAh built-in battery. After a three hour standard endurance test, the remaining 73% of the power is equal to the latest iPhone 7, slightly lower than the top level of Xiaomi 5 and S7 edge, but also better than Huawei's P9 and Meizu's "flagship" PRO 6 this year. The performance of long endurance models without those super capacity batteries is at the upper middle level of current smart phones. Thanks to the non radical SoC, the standby of Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is also quite good, with power loss of about 1% - 2% in 6 hours.

After running a large game, the temperature is measured at 36.7 degrees Celsius on the front and 38 degrees Celsius on the back. The "low temperature" is only warm and there is no hot hand experience of other models. Maybe that's why ASUS chose Snapdragon 625.

tail

It is difficult to evaluate the ASUS Zenfone 3 Smart Edition. Just looking at the parameters online, you will find that the performance is insufficient, but you don't think the processor is the bottleneck when you use it in practice; I may be a little disgusted with the design behind it, but the rectangular fingerprint recognition experience is really surprising; The photo adjustment of the automatic mode is not perfect, and the manual mode is a good remedy. So the author suggests that if possible, you can go to offline stores to experience it in person. Maybe you will see its unique appearance at a glance, or the sincere camera will make you fall in love with it. Maybe the solid workmanship has moved you. Only after you have tried it, can you draw the conclusion that Zenfone 3 Smart Edition is suitable for you.