The 9 best features in the Zenfone 6, the most surprising new smartphone of 2019 that only costs $500

1. The price: The Asus Zenfone 6 starts at just $500 — half the price of other premium smartphones.

The iPhone XS starts at $1,000. The Galaxy S10 starts at $900, and the S10 Plus starts at $1,000. This phone is half the price of those phones — and it still looks great, and works exceedingly well.

The starting price gets you 64 GB of storage, but you can get up to 256 GB.

2. The Zenfone 6 is truly an "all-screen" phone. Its 6.4-inch 1080p LCD panel actually stretches from edge to edge — with no notch or hole punch for the selfie camera. It's totally seamless.

3. The Zenfone 6 doesn't have a traditional selfie camera. Instead, whenever you want to take a selfie, the rear camera flips around to face you. This is how Asus was able to deliver an all-screen phone.

4. The camera itself is really neat: You can actually control the placement of the motorized camera to capture any angle, up to a full 180 degrees.

The phone's volume rocker can act as a controller for how much you want the camera to flip up, and the phone's Camera app also presents a slider that allows you to swipe up or down to control the placement of the camera.

5. Thanks to the unique camera system, the Zenfone 6 can take automatic panoramas. Just press a button, and the phone will take the perfect panorama by slowly moving the camera a full 180 degrees. There's no need to move your hand, or yourself, at all.

6. The unique camera design isn't just good for photos; in video mode, it can also automatically to track your subjects. Just tap your subject on the screen, and the motorized camera can follow it.

7. The Zenfone 6 has a cool defense mechanism to handle drops: Once the phone senses it's falling, it quickly retracts the camera into a safe, rear-facing position as to not damage the camera or the mechanism.

8. The Zenfone 6 has a massive 5,000 mAh battery, one of the biggest batteries in any smartphone you can buy.

For comparison, Samsung's massive Galaxy S10 Plus has a 4,100 mAH battery, and the similarly large iPhone XS Max has a 3,174 mAH battery.

(Milliamp-hours aren't always indicative of battery life — how the software uses the battery also plays a big role, for example — but it tends to be a pretty good indication of how much juice your phone will get.)

We don't know exactly how many hours of battery life the Zenfone 6 will get, but we're going to guess that it should easily last you a full day — especially since LCD screens don't suck up as much power compared to phones with OLED screens or higher refresh rates.

It even has — gasp — a headphone jack.

This is good in case your wireless headphones die, or you prefer a wired pair.

Overall, the Zenfone 6 packs in a ton of innovation for an incredible value.

It has everything you want in a smartphone: a great display, a great camera system, and (presumably) killer battery life, thanks to that super-large cell. Asus also did a good thing here by providing a pretty clean version of Android, and keeping the starting price at a competitive $500.

This phone should definitely be considered if you're looking for a quality smartphone that won't blow your budget.

You can learn more about the Zenfone 6 here.