Asus Zenfone 4 review

[Guest James Norton]

I was watching in January as Jonney Shih dramatically announced the Zenfone range at CES in Las Vegas. Like most attendees of that huge event, it seems Asus ended up with a hangover as it has taken a whole eight months to get the Zenfones out here in the UK. Eight months. Whole phone ranges have come and gone in that time - think Microsoft Kin - and Sony have announced two new flagship phones since January. You could almost create a whole new human being in the time that Asus have taken to put their new phones in a box and get them on the virtual shelves.

Then again, Asus have never really operated by the same rules as anyone else. They have a deserved reputation for creating some of the most innovative and interesting form factors in the Android ecosystem such as the PadFone and FonePad ranges. The Zenfones are rather staid and boring in comparison. I am not suggesting they are not worthy of thought and consideration, quite the opposite, but for Asus, there is a notable lack of madness in the design of each Zenfone.

Hardware

The Zenfone 4 is quite a standard looking four inch screened budget Android phone and it is nice to see the capacitive buttons are in the correct order even though they are spaced out a little too far apart and lack backlighting making using them in the dark an interesting challenge.

Of course, at a retail price of just £99 the specs of the Zenfone 4 are not going to set the world alight. Nonetheless, Asus have done a good job and there is little missing. On the front there is a basic four inch WVGA (800x480) LCD screen with a front facing camera, notification LED and those capacitive buttons for company as well as the usual speaker grille. Only a light sensor is missing from the set here meaning no auto-brightness.

The back is where the 5mp autofocus camera can be found along with a loud and decent enough speaker. As normal in a phone at this sort of price point, there is no flash on the back at all.

Prise that brightly coloured back off and the 1540mAh battery can be found and replaced if need be along with a SIM slot and microSD card to complement the 8Gb of internal storage. 1Gb of RAM is present in the phone.

Most interesting though is the chip that powers it all. Yes, the Zenfone 4 has Intel Inside. An Atom Z2520 to be precise. This gives you two cores operating at up to 1.2Ghz each. We are so used to Qualcomm Snapdragon chips that some comparison has to be made. I would say that this low end Intel SoC is somewhere in between the Snapdragon 200 and Snapdragon 400 but closer to the faster Qualcomm offering. It is certainly ample for a budget phone such as this.

Software

Whilst the hardware is generally decent, the software is more of a mixed bag. The Zenfone 4 runs Android 4.3 at the time of writing with Asus' Zen UI on top. It is a real shame that the software is so out of date although Asus are promising an update to Android 4.4 Kitkat very soon. The problem with software updates on the Zenfone is that Intel have to first make Android compatible with their chips before Asus can pick up the baton and add their customisations. It all takes time and Asus are not exactly well known for their speedy updates either.

Thankfully, Asus' new Zen UI, also announced in January, is rather nice. It feels similar to the LG's new G-UI and HTC's Sense 6 in many ways but Asus actually got their first.

Zen UI does that trick with the status bar where the colour for each customised app sits behind the time and signal meters etc just like HTC Sense. It gives the phone a really nice modern feel. Each app is colour coded although I couldn't tell you what the various colours mean.

Asus do pre-load a fairly large amount of software onto the Zenfone and only some of it can be disabled. There are some really useful apps including a task manager, Asus Splendid for tuning screen colours and brightness and the What's Next app which shows you what is err next! There are also some useful widgets including a simple clock and weather widget that I found myself giving pride of place on my home screen.

Talking of the home screens, the Asus launcher is really quite pleasant to use. It is fast and responsive and straightforward to customise. The default lock screen is also decent with three customisable app shortcuts and the What's Next widget as well as the time and weather information.

The notifications drawer has had the heaviest modification of standard Android components with a really pleasing new colour scheme. It has a neat little trick as well, pull it down from the left side and you get to your notifications, pull it down from the right side and it shows the quick settings. There is also a button for switching between the two views. The notification area is kept fairly clean and there is plenty of room for your notifications. Asus have customised the quick settings to each be a nice round icon and you can choose which options are shown there. A brightness slider completes the look.

Camera

The 5mp main camera on the Zenfone is very serviceable but obviously basic. It does a decent job given its specs and is probably better than most at this price point.

Asus' camera app is really rather good. There are a plethora of shooting modes all of which work fine though the HDR mode generates weird output much of the time. Different effects can be applied to your image and they can be previewed in real time. It is all unexpectedly decent for such a basic shooter. The camera is quick to capture images and has a noticeably higher frame rate when using the screen as a view finder than some much more expensive phones.

The Zenfone 4 can shoot video at a full 1080p but there is something wrong with both the frame rate and the bit rate as video is jerky and colours are just off. Frames get randomly dropped as you pan the phone around during recording as well. Shooting in 720p solves all these problems.

Performance and battery

The Intel Atom chip inside the Zenfone 4 is a surprisingly good performer. In general use, it compares favourably to something like a Moto G, but it isn't quite as good. Motorola provide a really good comparison point here as they have the Moto G and the Moto E. Asus have managed to get the Zenfone 4 into the range between these two devices. For my use, the Moto E is just too slow and jerky but the Zenfone 4 is totally usable. Multi-tasking and task switching is handled with ease and typing with a custom keyboard proves to be no issue. The Moto E struggles in both scenarios for me.

This is not a powerhouse of a phone by any stretch of the imagination but it stands up to comparison reasonably well and always feels faster than I expected. Compared to some other budget devices it is pretty good, outperforming some of the low end Nokia Lumia devices and proving to be a consistently acceptable performer all the time. A good job there from Asus.

Having a relatively small battery, I was concerned about how the Zenfone 4 would last for a day. For my use, it does make it through a day but without auto-brightness, I always end up running the screen at a high brightness level in case I step outside. I was able to get 3 hours of screen time but only by turning the brightness down below half way most of the time. There are some power saving modes that can be enabled which help a little too.

Ultimately, it will be fine for people shopping at this end of the market but the Moto E manages to be both cheaper and much longer lasting. Charge times are acceptable but there is no form of quick charge here. Simply by having a small battery, it charges quickly!

Call quality was fine during my tests but with no secondary mic for noise cancelling, the Zenfone 4 can struggle in noisy environments. Signal strength in general was excellent though as I have found with most Asus devices, WiFi was a little weaker than I expected. Still, there is nothing major to report here. The Zenfone 4 does not support LTE but on 3G was perfectly fine.

Conclusion

Asus have managed to put together a surprisingly compelling package here and at £99 it looks well priced as well. Despite the out of date software, I would pick the Zenfone 4 over a Moto E every time. The problem for Asus is that the original generation Moto G can be bought for very low prices these days and is a better phone in every way. At £99 recommended retail, it is technically cheaper than a Moto G which has a recommended retail price around the £150 mark. It is cheaper than a Nokia Lumia 630 as well. But street prices can be very different to retail prices.

Ultimately the Zenfone 4 is a really nice budget phone that is arriving at least six months later than it should have. Had it been available more readily after its announcement at CES in January, Asus would probably have carved out a nice little niche for themselves. As it is, hunt around for a cheap first generation Moto G and you wont be disappointed.

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[Guest hecatae]

where can you buy the zenfone 4 from?