Asus ZenFone 5 Is An Absolute Delight To Work With, But Will The Price Justify The Features?

Asus is a brand that has been long associated with PC gadgetry like graphic cards and motherboards. They have moved on to end-user gadgets like tablets and mobile phones, in the recent years. The latest to join its arsenal of mobiles is the Asus Zenfone 5, which we got over for a quick test. We took it out to play and we must say it is a very decent companion that lasts for a day, then asks for a recharge.

Design
The design of the ZenFone 5 is nothing out of the ordinary. We have seen similar designs before. It does look a bit similar to the 2013 edition of HTC One. However, subtle differences give this phone a distinct identity. As soon as you take this phone out of the box, you feel its lightness. This mobile has a very nice grip and is not very heavy to hold.

Dressed in matte black ZenFone 5 has a 5-inch touch display that is great to work with. One can manage everything on the screen even if you are wearing gloves. So for all of you who stay in the mountains or extremely cold climates, this phone is an option.

The rear of the phone has an 8 MP camera with flash, which is excellent by-the-way (more on that later) and a single grille at the bottom that hides the speaker. On the right, users get the marked power buttons and volume rocker key.

Performance and interface
Now for the fun stuff. ZenFone 5 is not a quad core, but that does not mean it is a slow runner. It has the Intel Atom 1.6 GHz dual-core processor along with 2 GB RAM to run apps and games smoothly. For graphics Asus has given this phone PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU. We ran few mid to high-end games on it to check the performance. While less resource hungry games such as plants vs zombies ran very well, the phone fought hard to keep up with high-end ones.

To store files the ZenFone 5 has 8 GB memory (out of which 3 GB is blocked for system files). The users end up getting a little over 4 GB for personal files, apps, images, movies and games. Yes, there is the option to expand the memory further, but that will just add to the costs.
ZenFone 5 is still on the old Android 4.3 Jelly bean OS and not the KitKat. Hopefully when this phone finally gets launched in India in the coming weeks, the OS would be KitKat. Asus has added the usual container of apps that are required for daily work and utilities. These include power saver, webstorage, file manager and more.

The home screen has 3 panels where the users can add widgets or app icons according their own tastes. There are many widgets available on-board with the option to get more. The 13MP camera is one of the high-points of this phone. The camera quality is excellent. We got crisp clear images even in low light.

Audio quality of the loudspeaker on this phone is not bad either. Voice call capabilities are on the better side too. All in all, we quite liked the ZenFone 5, but we are not going to give the final verdict here as the price is still undecided. But first impressions are not bad at all. Asus should price it below 18K for it to be a serious contender in the Rs 15,000 smartphone category.


Update: The price has been revealed of the phone. The Zenphone 5 can be picked up for Rs 9,999, which is incredible for this device.