Asus ZenFone 6 Review: Death of the selfie camera

I've never wanted to honey a smartphone more than the Asus ZenFone 6, only I had to cheque my biases at the door. While the ZenFone half dozen (ZF6) is a lovely device, it has 1 major result and includes a few features that prevent information technology from being i of the improve Android devices on the marketplace.

If yous're unaware of Asus' ZenFone line, that's considering they're not like shooting fish in a barrel to runway down. Asus doesn't sell its smartphones in carrier stores, but you can find them at retailers similar Staples, Best Buy and online at Amazon. In this case, the ZF6 is simply at Amazon.

Like to terminal yr's ZenFone 5Z, the ZF6 is an ultimate flagship contender. It features top-of-the-line specs and includes an all-screen display that lacks both a notch and a camera cutout. Instead, the device sports a flip-upward camera that'southward not only fun to show off at a party, only also very useful.

Display

6.four-inch, IPS LCD display, 1080 ten 2340 pixels, HDR10

Storage

64GB, 128GB (expandable)

Dimensions (in.)

159.one x 75.four x nine.2mm

Rear Facing Camera

48-megapixel (f/1.viii) + 13-megapixel (f/2.iv)

Front Facing Camera

48-megapixel (f/1.8) + 13-megapixel (f/two.4) [Camera flips upwardly]

Network Connectivity

GSM/HSPA/LTE

Sensors

Fingerprint, accelerometer, , gyro, proximity, compass

Launch Date

August 31, 2019

Misc

Colours: Midnight Black, Twilight Silver |

Asus ZenFone vi

vi.four-inch, IPS LCD display, 1080 ten 2340 pixels, HDR10

Asus ZenFone six

Snapdragon 855

Asus ZenFone half dozen

6GB of RAM

Asus ZenFone 6

64GB, 128GB (expandable)

Asus ZenFone 6

159.i x 75.4 x nine.2mm

Asus ZenFone 6

48-megapixel (f/1.8) + 13-megapixel (f/two.4)

Asus ZenFone 6

48-megapixel (f/1.8) + 13-megapixel (f/ii.four) [Camera flips up]

Asus ZenFone 6

Android 9 Pie

Asus ZenFone six

GSM/HSPA/LTE

Asus ZenFone 6

Fingerprint, accelerometer, , gyro, proximity, compass

Asus ZenFone 6

Baronial 31, 2019

Asus ZenFone 6

Colours: Midnight Black, Twilight Silverish |

A design that speaks volumes

Similar to the OnePlus 7 Pro, the ZF6's selfie photographic camera is not easy to spot. OnePlus' selfie camera pop-ups from inside the device'southward trunk, but the ZF6's rear-facing camera setup flips up to become the selfie shooters, which permit the ZF6'due south forepart-facing display to be unobstructed past any notches or photographic camera cutouts.

I dearest Asus' approach, and though information technology's not the get-go company to do this — Samsung was — I'm impressed the Taiwanese telephone maker pulled off this technique.

The ZF6 has a speaker grill in the small bezel at the acme, and that's pretty much information technology.

The back has the dual rear-facing camera setup with a fingerprint scanner and the Asus logo.

The bottom features a 3.5mm headphone jack, USB-C port and additional speakers. The speakers, by the manner, work very well. The ZF6 doesn't seem to be one of the louder smartphones on the market, at first. Nonetheless, when you go into the settings, and plough on the device's 'outdoor mode,' the phone uses both of its speakers to produce a thunderous sound.

Continuing with the design, on the correct side, the device sports a blue power button, volume rocker and an Assistant button.

It's nice to see that while Samsung has gotten rid of the headphone jack, Asus opted to keep information technology.

Unobstructed display

The ZF6 features a 6.4-inch IPS LCD display with a 1080 x 2340 pixel resolution, Corning Gorilla Drinking glass 6, HDR10 and a DCI-P3 colour gamut.

I thought videos and pictures looked adept, just when you hold the ZF6 side by side with the OnePlus 7 Pro — which sports a higher 1440 x 3120-pixel resolution — y'all can tell that the Zenfone 6'southward display lacks item. Additionally, colours expect more accurate on the OP7 Pro. Like to other handsets, the ZF6 has a customizable color temperature scale. It can besides achieve 466 nits of brightness, making it bright enough for near lighting conditions. To say the least, I did still bask watching and looking at content on the device.

With the weaker pixel resolution and the 466 nits max brightness, the ZenFone half-dozen's 5,000mAh battery can survive for more than one day. I'd discover that the phone would have about 50 percentage battery life left when my twenty-four hour period was over. However, I'd demand to charge the device at the terminate of the next workday.

Flipping Camera

While the ZF6's flip-upwards camera setup is fascinating, the quality of pictures, however, isn't stellar. Images are clear and look precise when using the primary camera, but the wide-bending camera offers fewer details, and there's a noticeable departure in quality between the two.

The ZF6 tends to overexpose photos also, making them look brighter.

Similar to plenty of the other devices on the market, the ZF6 features a scene optimizer. Information technology changes the exposure, color balance and saturation based on what's currently in the viewfinder. The scene optimizer worked well, simply occasionally when taking pictures of things like food, the colour balance was off.

The ZF6 also has a dark mode that I found worked decently when taking pictures at nighttime. In Toronto with street lamps illuminating the area, the images looked good, but lacked detail and were soft. Zooming in made this more evident. This feature isn't equally proficient as what's available in the Pixel or iPhone handsets, but I found information technology superior to Motorola's and LG'due south version of the functionality.

Selfies looked skillful in perfect lighting conditions, but details aren't preserved in features similar a beard or pilus. Further, nether less than ideal lighting conditions, yous can tell that the phone wants to overexpose pictures. In my case, it made my dark skin brighter.

The ZF6 tin can use the primary camera to follow every bit a user moves around when taking videos. This is a pretty absurd characteristic and allows users to keep the phone stable while the subject field is moving effectually out of frame.

In my testing, the ZenFone's front-facing camera makes a mechanical sound when information technology flips up. You tin choose to hide that sound with some other, I personally picked a whoosh sound that made it audio like I was going into hyperspace. Like the OnePlus seven Pro, if you drop the phone, it'll retract the camera immediately.

You can also manually close the photographic camera with your hand and command how it moves with the volume rocker. If you're agape about the camera breaking, YouTuber JerryRigsEverything put it through its paces and it survives pretty well; you lot can check out the video here.

ZenUI is so clean

The ZF6 uses a Snapdragon 855 processor with 6GB of RAM. The phone is quick and tin handle somewhat graphically intensive games like Evertale and Gears Popular! without getting hot.

Additionally, the ZF6 tin can go along more than than fifteen apps open up without whatever hiccups.

What's one of the best things about the device, nonetheless, is ZenUI half dozen. While ZenUI isn't stock Android, information technology'southward interface is slim and doesn't include a lot of bloatware out-of-the-box. The few extra apps it does take, you lot tin delete or hide. Yous can besides lock apps and then that you lot need a passcode or fingerprint scanner to get into them.

Even though the ZF6 has a fingerprint scanner, you can utilize the flip-up camera to unlock your handset. This works well, only sometimes I establish the photographic camera would try to flip up in my pocket, which was annoying.

Further, the ZF6 has an Assistant push. The push tin can be used to call Assistant or open up the Assistant page, through long or short presses. Y'all can also retask it to perform several functions like to toggle on and off your flashlight or NFC.