Colours of Rajasthan Captured On Our New Sleek and Sophisticated Phone- ZENFONE 3

We love gadgets and no doubt as a travel blogger we keep an eye on the best ones — Be it Camera or newly launched phones. So, when we were asked to review the newly launched Asus Zenfone3, we were pretty excited as we have heard great reviews especially about the camera and the 4K video shooting features. We had the 5.2 inch Shimmer Gold variant of the phone for a week with us wherein we tried to tinker and explore some of its really cool features.

Asus Zenfone series of phones have been one of the best value for money phones around for quite some time now.  The most striking feature of the Zenfone series has been the excellent camera. May it be the Zenfone 5 or the Zenfone Zoom, all have had excellent cameras.

So without further ado let us explore the phone and delineate more about the phone.

– Look and Feel –

The smartphone market today is dominated by unibody metal design so it was a welcome change when we unboxed the Asus Zenfone 3 which sports a 2.5D Corning Gorilla glass finish both on the front and the rear. The finish gives the device an elegant look and feel and is all shiny. Our first impressions were that the phone might slip off because of the finish but when we held it in our hands the grip was perfect, it did not slip or slither from our palms. The rear of the phone has a concentric-circle finish converging at the protruding camera that has a sapphire lens hence no worries of scratching it. The fingerprint scanner is located just below the rear camera.

The volume rocker buttons and the power buttons are located on the right side, the left side has the dual sim card slot. The mic and the USB Type-C port are located on the bottom and top sports the 3.5mm audio jack.

– Camera –

The Asus Zenfone 3 sports a 16 MP rear camera and a 8 MP front-facing camera. The 16 MP rear camera has a f/2.0 aperture and uses TriTech autofocus technology that combines laser, phase detection and continuous autofocus for quick focusing so that you do not have to keep waiting for the camera to focus. The camera app is damn easy to use. The camera app also has a manual mode for the advanced users.

The quality of pictures captured from the phone is comparable with DSLRs. Look at some of the images below –

The 4K video recording feature of the camera is another winner with sharp and vibrant videos. We captured some of the videos in daylight and they came out pretty good.The camera uses 4-axis, 4 stops Optical Image Stabilization for steady photos and we were impressed with the quality of the photos that we could capture from a moving car. The electronic image stabilization (EIS) is a neat feature in the phone to capture steady videos. Another striking feature of the phone is you can click pictures while recording videos.

– Tech Specs –

Asus Zenfone 3 packs a punch under the hood, it is powered by World’s First 14nm Snapdragon 625 processor with 64-Bit Octa-Core CPU @2.0Ghz. Snapdragon 625 is more powerful than the previous generation all thanks to new full 8 core CPU which is equivalent Snapdragon 800 processor. All thanks to the processor there was no lag while using the phone.

FinFet LPP technology ensures a 35% more power saving which increases battery life. With a regular usage, the phone lasted for more than a day. The USB Type-C charger is great for fast charging and faster file transfers. 

Some other features which are worth a mention:-

1. The sim card slot has space for one nano sim and one micro sim which can also be used for micro sd card. The memory is expandable up to 2TB.
2. Asus is now offering 100 GB of cloud space free of cost for 2 years in collaboration with Google which is great for folks like us who love to capture each and every moment have tons of pictures.
3. The phone features a 5 magnet speaker which is far better compared to the previous Zenfone models.
4. The look and feel of the user interface are crisp and neat with the new ZenUI 3.0.
5. The supports 4G LTE connectivity through both the sim card slots, but you can connect LTE network through one slot at a time.
6. The phone sports a 5.2 inch full HD display
7. The antennas are hidden in the contours of the phone.

– Comparison between DSLR and Zenfone3 –

Below picture is taken at the same place at the same time using a Canon T3i and Asus Zenfone 3. The image is quite sharp and crisp.

– Overall Verdict –

For 21K INR the phone definitely ticks off a lot of check boxes but the one feature that we were completely sold on was the 4K video recording and the image quality of photographs clicked outdoors. For the mid-range budget, Asus Zenfone 3 is a great competitor.

Make Every Photo Count with ASUS

You can easily buy the phone on Flipkart. 

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