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  • meacupla - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    There was another reviewer who also droppped his zenfone 2 and he cracked the screen.

    So is the phone hard to hold while pulling out of pockets and fingering buttons or what?
  • niva - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    It's always a risk when you don't use a case, even with a case it can happen.

    I found most disappointing about this phone the references to zenUI and the pre-installed bloatware. We knew the camera wasn't perfect but had some good parts too already so I wasn't too surprised.
  • Glock24 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Would a metal (alumunium) or glass phone fare any better? Would it also get big scratches and marks?
  • niva - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Metal doesn't necessarily fare better, though in this case it seems like it would have. Metal can get scratched and unlike this plastic removable case cannot be replaced... also metal is more rigid usually which leads to higher rates of cracked screens though that statement is hard to back up by statistics. Other polycarbonate phones (like Nokia) fare amazingly well in drops and feature surfaces that don't get scratched easily unless you purposely take a knife to them. I for one have never understood the premium materials thing going on in the industry because I always put cases on my phones. Even the all metal phones need cases to help protect them in drops.
  • Frenetic Pony - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    I've never dropped my phone in my life, going on 6+ years now for that record, so I've never seen a need for a case. But maybe I'm overconfident, and then maybe so are other people.
  • ketacdx - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I dropped my first Zenfone 2. Ended up needing to buy a 2nd one (I got the TW models so I've had it for a few weeks)
  • tipoo - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Plastic phones generally do better in drop tests than metal or obviously glass ones. I have heard of some ZP2s cracking, but I hope it's just the usual odd accident that would put any phone down. I wonder if there are any drop tests of it out yet.
  • Brandon Chester - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    No I was just trying to hold it in my left hand while trying to photograph it. I never dropped it once in normal use, but it's something to look out for. In general I find myself having trouble when holding any phone of this size in one hand, but that's not specific to the ZenFone 2.
  • ketacdx - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Mine landed flat from about 2-3 feet on my basement cement floor. directly flat on its screen, no sliding or anything and the screen completely shattered. Ironically it didn't have even a scratch elsewhere on it. It was cement so im not necessarily saying the phone is weak however I've dropped phones before but never had anything like that happen. It was very saddening..
  • re2onance - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

    Did you purchase the 550 or the 551. I've heard that the 550 does not actually come with Gorilla Glass 3 which is extremely deceptive in their advertising.
  • re2onance - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

    nm, apparently that isn't correct
  • meacupla - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    ok, done deal for a protective case for this thing then.
  • blzd - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    That's one of the issues with larger phones such as this.
  • jjj - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Actually in many markets the top Zenfone does compete with the G3 , S5 and the likes on price. Asus isn't quite hitting the 300$ + tax price everywhere and older flagships do get cheaper. The currency drops in some markets are not helping them either. The 200$ model is better value but it competes with A53 based devices that can be plenty cheaper with similar specs In China the TLC Meme da 3S ( 5inch 1080p , SD615 , 2GB RAM , 16GB NAND , 13MP and 8MP cams ,3050mAh ,139.6x69.6x8.9mm ,130g) just launched at 799CNY and that's 129$. Differences aside, they do have to compete with such devices. For the 300$ device you also got the soon to arrive SoCs, spending 300$ on this now might feel like a mistake in a few months.

    Wish you had the 1.8GHz 4GB RAM and 2GB RAM versions (they do have a lower clocked 4GB version) to compare battery life. In browsing the 4GB of RAM might be what kills it so fast.

    Always wanted to ask about the LTE battery test , how much of the time time is idle or each of the LTE power states. Or maybe even better, how much data is used per minute or hour or w/e. Americans can afford to use a few GB per month but most of the world uses 10 times less or worse. In any case, the daily average usage is from almost 0 to bellow 200MB so LTE is most of the time idle if not disabled. Knowing how much data you use in testing battery life would help understand the relevance of the test and maybe help you better calibrate it in the future. So any chance you can provide some (rough) estimate on data usage when doing that test? Right now we have no idea if it's 60MB per hour or 10 times less and that's a huge range.
  • menting - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Frankly, I don't think the difference in 4GB RAM and 2GB RAM should make that much of a difference. A difference of doubling the refresh rate in the DRAM, as well as the difference in idle power should be peanuts compared to to what the other components are pulling.
  • Glock24 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I'm also interested in knowing if there's any difference in battery life between the 1.8GHz 2GB and 2.33GHz 4GB version.

    Some people in forums are saying the 4GB version drains the battery faster, some say the high battery drain was due to some bug in Lollipop. Maybe this was already addressed in a system update? All those comments about poor battery life of the 4GB phone come from people using the TW or India version with factory software version (which I assume is older than that on the US version). But still, would be interesting to know for sure if the 2GB version has better battery life.

    I've read some people complain about the phone overheating, but there's no mention about temperatures in the review. Does it get hot during heavy use? Does it become so hot it's not comfortable to hold?

    In the review Brandon talks about preinstalled bloatware, but does not mention about any useful bundled software. For example, I've read in other reviews about a bundled app that gives the user granular control over which applications run in the background and which ones are allowed to autostart, without the need for the phone to be rooted.

    Also Asus gives you 5GB storage in Asus's own service with each device. How well or bad does the Asus Cloud app work? Does it make automatic backups? Is it easy to setup or use?
  • Chinaphonearena - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    An outstanding review, man. Truly. I hope you don't mind me plugging my own of the 2gb/16gb/1080p model. It's not nearly as technical or thorough as this, but some may get something out of it.

    http://www.gizbeat.com/7449/asus-zenfone-2-full-re...

    Also the tear down of the phone from a Taiwanese user, which shows some of the components Asus is using.

    http://www.gizbeat.com/7622/take-a-look-inside-the...
  • ketacdx - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I have a TW 4GB model and its been getting 2 software updates a month fixing little things here and there on top of the ZenUI updates. I have not had any overheating or even it getting warm. My Nexus 5 from before this got way more hot. There is an Auto-start manager which is kind of neat but 80% of the preinstalled stuff is useless. Luckily most of it can be uninstalled and not just disabled which is cool. I don't know about the US model but the TW model gives me 100 GB's of free Google Drive storage for 2 years. I am in Canada and it enabled fine. I have never used to Asus cloud so I don't know how much they provide.
  • Manch - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I'd like to see Windows Mobile loaded onto this and the benchmarks run again. Is that possible? MS said they would release a ROM that could be installed over android.
  • Gich - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I think they made only a ROM for Xiaomi Mi4...
  • piaw - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I don't want Windows Phone on this, I want full on Windows 10 with a telephony app! This will eliminate the "app gap" (sure, might have to use desktop mode, but for something like say, Garmin Express, I don't need to even see the UI after installation). With 4GB of RAM, this will outrun any number of existing full Windows tablets!
  • mkozakewich - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    If needed, it's also possible to have Windows and Android on at the same time with a button on each desktop to switch to the other OS.
    (Unless MS was brilliant and enabled Continuum to switch from a Windows Phone UI to a Desktop UI?)
  • darkich - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    The only possible reason why this is a $300 device, is the giveaway from Intel.
    Their most advanced Atom yet couldn't be sold for its real price and the fact that it can only compete with old 28nm and 20nm ARM chips explains why is that the case.
  • Speedfriend - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    This isn't the most advanced Atom yet, it is the last generation phone SOC.

    Intel doesn't give away any chips, it helps OEMs use intel SOCs by contributing to the higher bill of materials that using an Intel SOC entailed. As it adds features to its SOC, the contra revenue will go down.
  • SunLord - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Technically this is the current generation phone SOC as they've not launched an airmont based phone SOC yet
  • menting - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    The CPU being free or not won't make more than $50 difference though....
  • lefty2 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    The ZenFone is cheap because of Intel's contra revenue scheme. Basically, Intel sells the SoC to Asus for $0.
  • tipoo - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I read Asus ends up paying 5 dollars per chip rather than the 30+ some SoCs sell at, but yeah, close enough.
  • CrazyElf - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    For it's price, it's not a bad phone to be honest.

    I'd love to see what Asus can do in future generations and what a flagship that can rival high end phones like the Galaxy Note X would be able to pull off.

    Equally interesting will be what future Intel SOCs do. I would like to see an even bigger GPU loaded onto the phone.
  • UltraWide - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    What good is all this performance if the phone has ran out of batteries and you can't use it?
  • der - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Sweet review mates. Y'all the best!
  • Daniel Egger - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Two things:
    1) The x86 problems are very real; about any serious Android application contains native code for performance reasons, the rest are very non-demanding gimmicks or simple games. There're still plenty of application which do not even attempt to run on x86 which can be easily seen by e.g. checking the F-Droid repository with the app. And of those which do run quite a few simply don't work correctly; I've found quite a few of those in the Humble Bundles. My suspicion is that the developers do compile them for x86 but do not really test them on that platform...
    2) Those Silvermont cores do have decent performance but I've yet to see a single implementation where battery life doesn't suck. One discovery I've made is that those devices are very reluctant to go into deep sleep, even with some tweaking they'll usually stay on the lowest possible frequency most of the time. Could be that the software is not quite ready to properly handle those Intel cores or they simply suck...
  • MikhailT - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Both are software issues. Google doesn't have any incentives to stick with ARM only, they'd want to work with Intel to fix these issues.

    At my work, we had an issue where our app would crash on Intel devices, it took us a few weeks to figure out that it was a low-level bug in Android. We filed a bug report but no news if Google or Intel will fix it. We managed to work around it but it was difficult and took a lot of time.

    The latest rumors is that Android M is supposed to work on the battery issues. Hopefully, that includes optimization for Intel SoCs.
  • kpb321 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I was surprised that the review seemed to skip this entirely. It is certainly an issue when dealing with x86 android phones. Theoretically any app that doesn't include NDK "should" work fine on x86. My experience with Android phones/tablets was that I don't ever recall installing a single app that had NDK in the permissions list so it didn't seem like it was very common to me. On the other hand I've never actually had an intel tablet to actually see how good or bad it was.
  • Brandon Chester - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I also reviewed the Venue 8, and like I said in both this review and that review, I have never found a single app that doesn't work because the SoC is x86. A lot of people like to say that there are lots of apps that have issues, but they never seem to name any so there's no way for me to actually confirm that. If people do know of some problematic apps please let me know via email or Twitter so I can take a look.
  • Muyoso - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    An app called Photo direct that I use for work crashes instantly when launched.
  • rocketbuddha - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I bought a Dell Venue 8 with KitKat
    http://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-venue-8-8-intel-a...
    and found that it was the POS.
    Dunno if it was 1GB RAM that came with it, but it was hanging even while opening tabs in chrome/stock browser.

    With Lollipop, Google officially has both a ARM as well as x86 version it tests and releases. Pre-lollipop it was Intel who customized Android to work with its Atom processors.
  • Maleficum - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link

    Brandon, you'd be really surprised to know that most apps in the top charts are using NDK.

    Google claims that 85% apps are written in Java. I'm not saying it's a lie, but it is far from realistic since most apps in the top charts - apps most people use most of their time - are NDK based.

    Even more surprising would be the fact that roughly half of these apps contain ARM binaries only, thus forced to run via binary translation that results in a performance reduction of roughly 70% while the power consupmtion doubles.

    In that sense, your article is misleading IMHO, simply repeating Google's claims.

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/05/02/arm_test_r...

    I think it's clear why so many apps are NDK based: Java isn't simply the right language for computationally intensive apps, and primitive apps written in Java cannot make it into the top charts.

    And app developers aren't interested much in supporting x86 natively considering the tiny market share. No one can blame them for neglecting x86.

    That's the reason why I'd never buy nor recommend x86 Android phones, and Intel having difficulties getting foothold in mobile segment.

    I think it would be worth an investigation and probably a separate article.
  • Thunderc8 - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link

    I have installed all known apps and then some and all working perfect and super fast. If what you say is true then Intel CPU is a beast since it looses so much performance and at the same time is so Damn fast.
  • coolied - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    NDK wouldn't be in the permissions list, it simply means the app was coded in C++ and not JAVA. Unfortunately, most apps you would WANT to run and run WELL are written in C++ aka most 3D games.
  • ketacdx - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    The only apps I've had that wont work are some games. I couldn't get Jet Grind Radio or Chaos Rings GP installed. Otherwise everything worked and I've installed a lot.
  • thetuna - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    You really should compare this to the Alcatel Idol 3 (also a cheap 5.5" 1080 phone).
    It's an incredible phone for the $200 I paid, and I'd say it's still a deal at the current price of $250.
  • tipoo - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I'd go with the ZP2 over that though. The GPU performance on that was far worse iirc, and the whole 8 A53 cores thing is dumb. Does get better battery life though.
  • coolied - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    And it has the advantage on using a Snapdragon SoC, so it should be more compatible.
  • tipoo - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    What apps have you seen not work on x86? Most are cross compiled, and most of the rest run fine on binary translation.
  • zodiacfml - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Should have been the Nexus. Yet, personally, I just got the N5 last year.
    One criticism is the back cover which should have been similar to the N5, with a soft but sufficient grip cover. I also found the plastic cover to be good for audio performance producing slightly better bass than those made of aluminum.

    I really like the texture of the N5 as I have never dropped it once for almost one year already.
  • ketacdx - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I agree the Nexus 5 backing would have rocked on this. This phone is way too slippery vs. size for me to feel comfy not using a case and I hate using cases on phones this big, lol.
  • coolied - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    But you can't expect Asus (Zenfone 2) to use the same materials as LG (Nexus 5)
  • zodiacfml - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I don't know if it is significantly more expensive and that material has been used several times already making it cheaper.
  • zodiacfml - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    True. It's not the reviewers fault as he dropped the device which produced the marks on the phone.
  • quiksilvr - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I bought a third party Qualcomm Quick Charge 2.0 charger for $15 on Amazon for my Zenfone 2 and it works just fine.

    http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00OVD3FEU/
  • grusin123 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Camera review focuses just on the asus camera app, which clearly is the weak point. Could you please test it with google camera app? you can download it or any kitkat+ device.

    It would be interesting to see how it compares against nexus 5 and 6, which both use google camera app.
  • Kepe - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Using a different camera app doesn't fix problems with the ISP. Camera apps don't process images, the ISP does. Well, some camera apps may do some extra post-processing after the ISP has done its processing, but still if the ISP oversharpens the images in the "opimized" mode and leaves them blurry in the "no optimizations" mode, there's very little a different camera app could do to change image quality in any significant way. You'll probably end up with less choice for camera settings using a 3rd party camera app, because an app made by someone else probably doesn't know about the "optimized" and "nonoptimized" modes the ASUS camera has.
    A camera app basically just tells the phone to take a picture with a certain set of parameters, and those parameters are within the same limits no matter what app you use. Some apps may have settings that seem to exceed what the OG app has, but those are usually just some software tricks that make horrible looking images. For example, I've got an app that lets me choose a 20s exposure time, but using that makes images horribly grainy, causes weird light effects and as such produces images that are completely useless. Max exposure in the original camera app is 1s, so the other app probably tries to take multiple images and combine them to a single one, or then it records a 20s video and compresses that into a single image. It's similar with apps that let me choose a higher ISO level than what is offered by the original app. They just use software post-processing to brighten the image after it has been taken.
  • Kepe - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    *optimized. Still need an edit button... How hard can it be?
  • tmc - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Can you please comment on cell signal reception? Possibly compare with other phones as well - like you have done for other features. The reason I am asking is that - a new phone (not mentioning the device/brand) that I purchased has like approx 10dBm lower reception than my earlier device (nexus 4) - and this significantly affects LTE. Where I used to get LTE, now I don't. I would think cell reception should be a very important criterion. Thanks.
  • Brandon Chester - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    It didn't seem to be any worse or better than other devices. For reference, I put the phones in a certain spot in order to make sure the LTE signal is strong during the battery life test. The signal strength was basically the same as the iPhone 5s or the Galaxy S6 in that same spot.
  • tmc - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Thanks. That helps.
  • velanapontinha - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Hi, Brandon.

    Any ETA on the review of the "regular" MX4? MWC is long over.
    AnandTech still doesn't have one single review of a Mediatek based device. Mediatek is no longer a Cyrix kind of thing, you guys should give it the spotlight it is starting to deserve.
  • Maxpower2727 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I hate to be "that guy," but....G4 review?
  • re2onance - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Thanks for the detailed review of the battery life. Did you use the Asus web browser or Google Chrome for the web browsing battery test?
  • Brandon Chester - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Google Chrome is used for all of our browser tests, including battery life.
  • re2onance - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I remember watching a review earlier about the screen being low in brightness. I thought it may have been on purpose although I assumed it was due to Asus trying to make up for the Intel SoC power consumption.

    I've read in the XDA forums that people experience better battery life after rooting and removing a lot of the bloatware apps, particularly the Asus built-in web browser that seems to be attached to the Trend Micro security. Honestly, people shouldn't have to root their device in order to eek out better battery life.

    It seems kinda weird how Asus would spend the effort to gimp the screen from what it is actually capable of, and then fill it with apps which probably also could hinder battery life as well.
    It seems like a good value phone, but the direction is all over the place.

    I think the review seems fair since this is both the hardware and software Asus shipped with and updated.
  • T1beriu - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Brandon, could you actually disable all ASUS bloatware?

    I got an ASUS MeMO Pad 7 (ME572C) updated to 5.0 that looks exactly as your screenshots and I can't disable any of the useless ASUS apps.

    Shame on you ASUS.
  • Brandon Chester - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    No you can't disable all of it. I probably should have been more specific about that. You can uninstall or disable some apps such as the Apps4U apps and a few others like Omlet chat. Most of the apps that are actually from ASUS are stuck there though.
  • ketacdx - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Hey Brandon. I thought the same but if you follow the method of holding the app in the app menu and drag it to uninstall at the top, that seems to work for most. For some reason I wasn't able to uninstall in Google Play for the same ones oddly, only disable.
  • Brandon Chester - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    That isn't working for me for apps like ZenCircle, Mirror, etc. The button to disable is greyed out.
  • ketacdx - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Yeah, I cant get those off either but it worked a lot of them thankfully. I really wish they enabled uninstall for the rest...
  • tipoo - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    "In the case of the ZenFone 2, we see that it lasts exactly as long as the HTC One (M9). Last run GPU performance is noticeably slower though."

    But isn't that just the relative performance difference between the two GPUs? I guess I still don't really understand the last run GPU framerate metric, shouldn't it be as a proportion of the first run framerate to mean anything? If one device performs at 100, another performs at 50, and the final runs of both are 50, the final run FPS would appear the same, but the second device didn't throttle at all while the first throttled by half.

    Does the test already take this into account?
  • SHartman1976 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I think you guys need to rerun the Nexus 6 battery benchmarks with 5.1 - the experience of myself and many others regarding N6 battery life is nothing like what you found on the initial 5.0 review.
  • Brandon Chester - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I just finished re-testing the Nexus 6 on 5.1 and it lasted for 7 hours and 24 minutes in our browser test which is a worse result than the initial review. It's a small enough difference that I'll attribute it to battery degradation and/or test variance, but the point is that it hasn't improved at all.
  • blzd - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    That makes sense as Google released an update specifically for the Nexus 6 to have all 4 cores run at the same time during normal phone operations.

    Apparently it brought snappier performance at the cost of slight battery reduction.

    As usual though, battery improvements tend to be placebo.
  • tipoo - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Everyone was quick to blame the Intel SoC and the alleged x86 power penalty, but this looks like pretty good proof they just picked an inefficient display panel.

    Though it could still have something to do with the SoC - the review also noticed the screen backlight adjustment to the colors on screen was rather aggressive, that's an Intel technology for saving power. I wonder if other SoCs are just better at it. Less noticable, while saving more power?
  • epr118 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Hey Brandon, you mention the double tap to wake, but the phone also has a double tap to shut off the screen. You just need to be on the home screen and not in an app for it to work.
  • icwhatudidthere - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    You can be in an app, you just have to double tap on the notification bar.
  • epr118 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Ah, I never tried that. Thanks for the tip!
  • Brandon Chester - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I was unaware of this, thanks for the tip.
  • shadowjk - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I'm curious how long the battery would last streaming Spotify or similar over mobile network. This is a use case where the inefficient screen doesn't matter as much. Would be interesting to see if the CPU can service that without staying awake constantly burning loads of power, and how power efficient the modem is.

    My current device doesn't last 8 hours streaming music, and I need to carry powerbanks to keep it fed.
  • tipoo - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    "Because our iOS benchmark only supports a single IO thread,"

    Doesn't HFS+ only support a single IO thread? So the benchmark wouldn't be the issue. HFS+ also has other weird limitations for 2015 like using 16 bit processor width and only single programs can access it at once, I think.
  • middlehead - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Does anyone know if this thing supports MHL? I've seen conflicting reports on several spec sites. If it does I might have to buy it, flaws and oversized screen be damned.
  • ketacdx - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I don't have an MHL adapter to test but I did just check my slimport to HDMI adapter and no luck :(
  • jt122333221 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Heads up - it also supports double-tap to sleep. Unfortunately, you have to double-tap on a completely empty portion of the display (empty homescreen or in the notification bar) to get it to sleep.
  • mkozakewich - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    Put Cherry Trail in here with Window 8 (and then 10) and it would totally be what I'm looking for in a phone. I'm going to have to keep my eyes open.
  • commenter001 - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    I just bought the 4GB model. I've actually been using it more than my S6! What the review kinda skipped on was real world usage of the device. This thing doesn't skip a beat. It's amazing how many apps you re-open and they're right back where you left them (hours ago). Unlike the S6 where it seems to reload every dang time just after normal usage. The power button is not a big deal, I use the double-tap on the screen to wake it up all the time.

    The battery life is not that horrible, gets me through the day and I'm in poor cell area most of the time. Video and pictures, yeah, they're pretty average.

    Again, I'm amazed at the lack of the usual lagginess that I've come to accept from Android. Maybe it'll creep up over time but so far this phone is on par or exceeds the S6 just in real world day-to-day stuff for me.
  • ketacdx - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    I agree man, this thing is surreal for real world usage. Battery really is pretty decent, mine is about 2% right now with 24 hrs on, 3hrs49mins of which are screen on time. Only thing I notice with mine is Android OS is using 31% of battery with CPU total at 10hrs 16 mins. I can only assume a glitch or Android issue that hopefully repairs with updates. Either way, pretty decent!! :)
  • blzd - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    I'd say that's less of an accomplishment from Asus and more of a standard failing from Samsung and Touchwiz.

    Have you tried any other recent Android devices? Nexus devices and Motorola using stock Android have felt just as snappy and fluid for years now and it's only gotten better with Lollipop.
  • hans_ober - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link

    How would this compare to the Xiaomi Mi 4i? In India, the lowest model of the Zenfone 2 is price competitive with the Xiaomi Mi 4i, which I hope AT manage to get their hands on.
  • aryonoco - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Great article. Thanks to your work Brandon, I'm beginning to not even miss Brian any more

    This was a pleasure to read. Thank you.
  • lvchubby - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I'm a newcomer and respect Anandtech's true reviews instead of some others which look like marketing articles, but there's something missing about this review. I agree that the device is very value for money, but there are also quite a large number of complaints on Taiwan's user forums (in Chinese of coz) about QC and compatibility issues every time Asus launch a new phone in Taiwan. Sadly it happens repeatedly and Zenfone2 is not an exception, and still many people bought it due to it's CP value. Some of them were blaming Asus for using them as beta testers before the international launch. That's why I'm still holding up my decision.

    I'm not saying the Zenfone2 is not a good device, but for those who wanna buy it, I'd suggest holding up your decision for a few months till Asus hopefully solving most of the compatibility issues by software updates. Also check carefully for any faults when u receive the device.

    As a side note, there are some local reviews/users saying the 3Gb RAM is not quite enough as the Zen UI eats up much RAM, and 4Gb RAM version is recommended.
  • chrnochime - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    You mean like this thread from mobile01(yeah I read Chinese too):
    w w w . mobile01 . com/topicdetail.php?f=588&t=4395771

    Hopefully this will force them get their shit together since they're now selling in the US...
  • lvchubby - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    U can find similar posts even in Asus' own forum:
    http://w w w . asus . com/zentalk/tw/forum.php?mod=forumdisplay&fid=174

    And imo it's a shame that the CEO admitted the beta tester thing...
    http://w w w . mobile01 . com/topicdetail.php?f=588&t=4332578
  • loimlo - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link

    My mom has been using 1st gen, Zenfone 5 for 10 months. ASUS SW update literally broke app compatibility several times during this period. At some time, my mom couldn't disconnect a phone call due to a nasty SW bug! I'd to lock the screen and unlock it again to disconnect. It's not the end of world, but still an alarming for potential 2nd gen, Zenfone 2 buyers. Fantastic HW value, but subpar SW update quality.
  • ketacdx - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    I've been using the TW model since long before the NA launch and there have been a lot of software Updates and ZenUI updates but its not like a beta testing thing. They are fixing issues most manufacturers don't bother with. Little things that they are truly optimizing that a normal person would never notice. Aside from my worry about the quality of the gorilla glass when dropped (think nexus 4 outcomes), the QC elsewhere on this things feels prime. I have no concerns.
  • Dawgmatix - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Are there any phones with arm processors that use the same display? What does their battery life look like? How can we be sure its not the cpu or gpu that is eating up the battery?
  • Brandon Chester - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Because the SoC power usage is small relative to display power usage on any device during the browser test, and the ZenFone 2 performs worst of all in that test. In tests where the SoC has a greater impact and the display has a lesser one it actually achieves a battery life closer to that of other devices.
  • YOUCANNOTDENY - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Hello,

    I had a few observations/questions. I currently own the $199 version of the Zenfone 2, and have not noticed any dynamic contrast or CABC during my time with the device. This may be because I cannot recognize it, but I'm pretty sure something similar is used in my Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook with Intel's HD Graphics drivers (I promptly disabled the dynamic contrast shifts in Graphics Settings). I have, however, turned off "Smart Saving" in Power Management on the Zenfone 2, so that may be what is causing the difference. I am also on the latest 2.17.40.12 software version, which may have introduced changes.

    One other thing, I noticed that in the "Splendid" app, owners can change the color temperature of the screen. I immediately noticed the overly cold white point of the screen when I first powered on the device, so I looked to the Splendid app to change the color temperature. I am currently on "Reading Mode" with default settings on the slider, which makes the screen more bearable to my eyes, but I am still unsure of the absolute color accuracy. If at all convenient, would it be possible to rerun screen accuracy measurements in the various color temperature modes offered in the included "Splendid" application? Perhaps, we may be able to find a setting that makes the most of the included panel and does it justice.

    Thank you!
  • Brandon Chester - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    The CABC is there on both models. I made sure that ASUS's power saving features were disabled before I did my testing.

    While I could try and adjust vaguely labelled sliders in the Splendid app to fix the display's white point, the gamma and greyscale are not possible to fix because of the CABC. Because of this, there's no point in trying to fix the display.
  • Quad5Ny - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    @Brandon Chester ASUS stock theme looks like a copy of Solstice by John Bussell (@myeverydayghost) who based his theme on Apple's iOS 7. -- http://modmyi.com/info/solstice.php, http://cydia.saurik.com/package/com.modmyi.solstic...
  • UtilityMax - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    The device is not without flaws, but the $200 model seems like a good value. However, the $200 model is a bit dubious proposition considering how close it is to the OnePlus One.
  • Sammaul - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Have the $300 model, and have used a OnePlus...frankly in real world usage it's kind of a wash. OnePlus has better battery life, camera, and speakers. The Zenfone is absolutely quicker and smoother, even with none of the bloat uninstalled. That 2 channel ram in it does wonders compared to other phones I have used.
  • MoJo JoJo - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I have been using ZenFone 5 for almost 7-8 months. There's only one thing that I don't like about ASUS is that software and software updates.

    Software:
    ASUS ZenUI is buggy as hell. They provide some update to improve one area and ruins the other. They just cannot provide a single, practically stable, update/ROM. It irritates me a lot. Even now most of the ZenFone 2 users are facing so many issues of Shitty Battery" "Force Stop" "Worse Camera" "Heating under normal use (45 deg.C)

    Software Update:
    Like I said I have been using ZenFone 5 for 7 months, it seems like ASUS is very slow in updating their devices. First, ASUS launched the 1st gen. ZenFone series in July 2014 (in my country) with Jelly Bean 4.3 instead of KitKat 4.4
    After almost 2 months of waiting (Aug-September) they released the KitKat update. That update messed up everything, literally everything. It took another 1-2 updates for ASUS to remove the bugs.
    In November 2014 they announced that whole ZenFone series will get the Lollipop update in April 2014. It's almost the starting of June but no ZenFone (intel Version) has got lollipop yet! They are just delaying the update to sort out the bugs. But no use. In May Google has rejected their update during verification. So, still waiting for update, which will be 5.0 not even 5.0.2 (Though they have promissed to give 5.1 update, but it will take ages to come).

    Moral of the Story:
    No doubt, ASUS is great in providing high end specifications. But it ends there itself. The whole experience gets ruined by the software.
  • speconomist - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Brandon, could you comment on the speaker?
    I have read somewhere else that it's not really good, I would welcome your objective comments (or even subjective too).
  • Brandon Chester - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Unfortunately I don't have any means of objectively evaluating the speaker which is why I didn't really comment on it. It doesn't sound any worse than the speaker on the iPhone 6 or Galaxy S6 really, but it's definitely not BoomSound, and it's not as good as you'd expect considering the speaker grille is so large.
  • speconomist - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Thanks, sounds like good enough.
  • thegeneral2010 - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    i heard it was running android 5.0.1 in 32bit and after upgrading to 5.1 its 64bit got activated is this true?
  • ketacdx - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    The Zenfone 2 is on 5.0. In CPUZ you can see it is an x86-64bit kernel so it is correctly 64bit by default. Ive read this elsewhere as well but its definitely a 64bit kernel.
  • MeganKnight - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    thats great
  • seh1984 - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    Is this a review for the 2GB or 4GB model? If the 4GB model, can we get the benchmarks for the 2GB?
  • tipoo - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    They have the 4GB one, as noted in review. The Z3560 has about 80% the CPU performance of the Z3580, and GPU performance is the same between the two.
  • JackF - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I just got my new ZenFone 2 yesterday. I finally broke down and made the switch from my iPhone5s which I like but wish it had a bigger screen, I doesn't seem as big as I thought it would be - it fits in my front jeans pocket with no problem. After reading the reviews, I am being super careful not to drop it. I routinely drop my iPhone but I have a rubberized type case to cushion the impact.

    So far I am liking the phone - after using it non-stop all morning (surfing, installing apps, playing games) my battery did get down to 40%. With the same usage tho, My iPhone 5s would probably have been close to zero. I am due for a upgrade in October, so I will see how this goes.
  • re2onance - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I ordered one myself and I'm coming from a iPhone 5 which is supposed to have really good web browsing battery performance, so I'm wondering how it will work out. I'm probably going to try to root the phone and run something like greenify to wipe all the crap I don't want on it which comes pre-installed. Hopefully that and updates will improve the battery life on the device, although I'm skeptical.
  • tipoo - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    File system metadata structures in HFS+ have global locks. Only one process can update the file system at a time. The benchmark that only uses one IO thread isn't artificially limiting the iPhones, it's using exactly what it can. In the future, may as well use the newer multithreaded one for Androids even if the iPhones is single threaded, imo.
  • soccerballtux - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    videos of this 'smoothness' in the ZenUI and app animations you spoke of would have been cool. I don't notice it [desensitized] like I used to, but Android has very...uncomfortable...transition animations.
  • blzd - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Android does? Are you sure you're not thinking of Touchwiz or some other poorly implemented manufacturer skin?

    Android 5 (Lollipop) has very smooth animations. Heck even Kit Kat did. Nexus and Motorola devices (stock android) have been 100% smooth for 2 years or more now.
  • Sammaul - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Very smooth animations. Camera is.....ok. But as I am coming from a Mate 2, it's actually an improvement for me lol. Been using the phone for 3 days now, and have seen no stutter, no jittery animations. Everything loads quickly and smoothly. The 2 channel ram is very nice imo
  • Cory Yalowicki - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    I'd like a review that compares this phone with the Alcatel Onetouch Idol 3.

    Seems like that is this phone's closest competitor.
  • tipoo - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    That performs pretty bad in games from what I saw in video comparisons, GPU is much weaker than this one. The 8 A53 cores are dumb too, the 4 slightly higher performing ones in the Zenfone 2 are preferable. The Idol 3 has better battery life.
  • vision33r - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link

    For $300 I think the G3 is a better phone. You get a QHD display, very good camera, performance is usable, removeable battery and micro SD. The QHD Display looks very sharp and clear. The Asus is a good phone but I can't use a smartphone with a horrible camera in 2015. G3 has optical focus and shoots great videos too. I don't get one thing is how bulky the Asus looks but yet the battery is not user replaceable. The ASUS TF series has really spotty QC such as bad batteries I can't trust relying on Asus hardware.
  • blzd - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Where is the G3 $300? I know the G2 is around there now, G3 is still about $500 from what I can see.
  • Sammaul - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    G3 at $300? Where? And please don't say Swappa, or any other resale site. Personally I refuse to buy used phones.
  • YB0006 - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    i got a asus phone days ago from dhgate.com and it feels very good till now!
  • lexfury - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    It's a shame this isn't the equivalent of $200 in the UK, I would have snapped one up as a replacement for my sadly departed Nexus 5, but the cheapest I could find was £172 from a Chinese website.
    Not even available from within the UK yet as far as I can see, but will be £200+ no doubt when it arrives.

    Still a great bit of kit for the money even at the equivalent of $250 or $300.
  • Dave* - Sunday, June 7, 2015 - link

    Both models are available on Amazon, a U.K. supplier and fulfilled by Amazon (so free next day delivery for Prime customers).
  • Sammaul - Thursday, May 28, 2015 - link

    Phone has it's warts, but overall it really seems to be a very good value. And apparently others agree....every color, both versions, are in the top 30 unlocked phones on Amazon US. If Asus continues to update and support this, it could be their ticket into the US market. If they pull a Huawei(with the Mate 2 not getting updates), I will be very disappointed.
  • 0iron - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

    "Fast charging is essentially a trade off between battery longevity and charge times, and it really relies on the assumption that smartphones are replaced every two years which is less time than any user would notice possible adverse effects. This rapid replacement of devices is somewhat worrisome, but that's a topic for another time"

    I really hope the topic about fast charging effect on battery wear will come out sooner rather than later. Reason is I just bought S6 for my wife & our replacement cycle normally in 3-5 years. I foresee to keep S6 for a long time.

    I will avoid fast charging now, unless it's really necessary.
  • cmvrgr - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

    Is it a truly DUAL SIM DUAL ACTIVE ?
  • Rayb - Friday, May 29, 2015 - link

    Of the 2 only SIM 1 will do data, SIM 2 is limited to text and calls.
  • cmvrgr - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    Yes. Is the only officially dsda in the world. I hate that nobody in a review mentioned it. Check their site. And the only with that feature that support band 20 (800) in Europe.
  • nofumble62 - Saturday, May 30, 2015 - link

    My Nexus 5 power switch just got stuck last week (phone gone into boot loop), so I got the $200 ASUS as a replacement. I did not miss the Nexus Lollipop at all. The Zenfone2 phone is sweat, at unbelievable price. All my old apps work just fine, and much faster than the Nexus. (I paid $350 for the Nexus5 and thought it was a bargain). I love the double tap to turn on-off. This definitely will eliminate the power button issue like in the Nexus5. I use the power button on the Nexus 5 at least 50 times a day. With the ASUS, may be 2.

    About bloatwares, it is non-issue. ASUS launcher actually gave me more features than standard Lollipop (such as double tap, shake). The ASUS email apps works great for my hotmail. Previously I used Outlook apps from MS, and it crashed all the time on the Nexus (what's a shame MS).

    I tried Google Now launcher, and quickly realized that the double-tap does not work, so I went right back to ASUS launcher.

    Anyway, I think this phone got subsidize money from Intel. It won't last forever. Get yours. Heck, at this price, I may pick one up for backup.
  • cmvrgr - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    I I haven't decided yet. Super with dsfa , huge ram and good specs.
    I wonder if the camera is in sony imx 214 quality levels. If someone can confirm that will be super. The only that I hate from Intel cpus is that flash is not running.

    I like zenui and runs smoothly in my Asus fonepad 8 dual SIM with 1gb ram only....
  • Bikram - Monday, June 1, 2015 - link

    HI,

    Yes agreed that Zenfone2 battery discharges fast..... but one factor which is responsible is that it has Dual SIM Dual Active feature... which means that It has 2 receivers always active.... so eats up more power... thats the reason why maximum phones are Dual SIM Dual Standby. which helps in conserving the Battery...

    I suggest to rerun these test with Single SIM on all the phones and then compare.....

    Either I will be surprised... or Everyone else will be surprised.....

    Thanks,
  • Brandon Chester - Saturday, June 6, 2015 - link

    I never had a second SIM in the phone.
  • Ethos Evoss - Friday, June 12, 2015 - link

    LG g3 copy ?
  • arnab_mallik - Monday, June 15, 2015 - link

    Can u actually get 390 nits of brightness in this device?
  • Rahul Ram - Tuesday, June 16, 2015 - link

    Sir my mom offered me 25,000 rupees
    i wish buy asus zenfone 2
    shall i buy it or not
  • ofers - Thursday, June 18, 2015 - link

    הוראות הפעלה בעברית שלטלפון חדש
  • ginto - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link

    Hi, I just have a brand new ASUS ZENFONE 2 ZE551ML 4/64GB after months of waiting. First day I charge it overnight and day after when it was at 39% it automatically shut down I try a 2nd overnight charge, after 6 hours working and setting pretty good it will automatically shut down when the battery was about 43% and has to be connected to the charger if i want to start up. ! 3rd overnight charge and yesterday evening at around 45% shut down AGAIN. I not charge it anymore. Go back to shop for money back !!
  • OFelix - Saturday, June 27, 2015 - link

    Is the battery fixed or replaceable? It doesn't say in the table of spec's (it should!).
    I couldn't find this obvious piece of information on the battery life page.
    (I searched for 'fix','remov' or 'replac')
  • squalldna - Sunday, June 28, 2015 - link

    am i the only one getting this problem with my zf2 2gb 16gb 1.8ghz:
    after complete battery drain, device cant resume when turned on unless charged for 10-20 minutes. unlike my other devices they can be turned on from 0% battery immediately once plugged. i posted this to XDA, people said that it's normal. do you have the same experience?
  • Belldandy - Friday, August 21, 2015 - link

    Can we get an update on the Zenfone 2 after numerous firmware updates? Also if possible test out the 4GB/ 64GB flash and the 3580 processor.
  • eldakka - Tuesday, September 1, 2015 - link

    " While battery life on the ZenFone 2 may not always be the best, buyers may find some comfort in knowing that when it does die they'll be able to get it up and running in a very short period of time."

    Sounds a lot like a teenager.
  • aungmyokhing - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link

    Zenfone2 have Touch Screen Error. I bought last 3 months. Now appear that Error. Now I can't use my phone. Very stupid condition!
  • aungmyokhing - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link

    My phone have no damage. No cracked. That error was appear automatically.
  • aungmyokhing - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link

    I used Zenfone 2 ZE551ML. My phone serial number is F4AZFG02X506.
  • aungmyokhing - Friday, September 4, 2015 - link

    Zenfone 2 have the so many errors. That shouldn't for use.
  • Lyte - Saturday, April 9, 2016 - link

    I recently bought the Zenfone 2 4GB RAM 64 GB model, and I could say the battery life sucks. One time it lasted for only about 4 hours on minimal use, and Ive already uninstalled and/or disabled the apps which aren't very useful and are just battery drainers. Any suggestions on how I can improve it's batterly life? Also I came from a Galaxy J7, and I could say the display is subpar to that of the super AMOLED 1280x720 display of the J7.
  • Mike0902 - Wednesday, June 8, 2016 - link

    I bought the same model as you and have to agree that the battery life is a known problem with this phone. I could probably make it through the day just so long as I don't play power hungry games at anytime. When I bought this phone it seems people were blaming the OS saying it was a known problem with Android 5 and there would be an update to 5.1 which should improve the battery life. As yet after 8 long months no update has been received even though Asus have sent out other updates during that time. From what I can gather now is that Asus are planning to skip 5.1 and go straight to Android 6.0. I shall only believe it when I see it especially with the broken promises of 5.1. I did a test to see exactly what was eating the battery and first off did a test by turning everything off using 'flight mode', increasing the brightness to maximum and keeping the screen on continuously to see how long it lasted before the battery gave out. It stayed on for an incredible 8 hours before the battery cried enough. It clearly isn't the screen that is responsible and I now run my phone on 75% brightness whereas before I was dimming it in the belief if would make the battery last longer. I have Sonic Dash installed on my phone which is a known power hungry game but I can play that for as long as my Nokia 1520 which is surprising as I was expecting the battery to plummet as soon as I started playing. Even saved videos play at full brightness without a massive battery drain so just what is causing the battery life to be so crap when in normal use? I have 2 SIM cards installed with SIM 1 using 4G and that is known to be power hungry but the biggest fall of all is when you start to use the internet through Google Chrome. The battery literally goes into freefall and will drop at a rate of approximately 1% every minute so a full charge would give you less than 2 hours of web surfing which is abysmal compared with other phones, therefore it seems the biggest eater of power is that Intel 2.3GHz processor. I can have an hours calling time using 4G and only use 10% of the battery but anything that uses the internet, which is just about every app installed, has to be refused permission to auto start and run in the background eating up the power. You can deny virtually all the apps from starting using the Auto Start Manager and I have also found it helps to run Clean Master at regular intervals to close down apps that have been used and get rid of junk files that build up. It's not strictly the answer but it does help and it does make the battery last longer and just about sees me through a day. With regard to the promised upgrade to Android 6.0, I wouldn't hold your breath on that one, I shall only believe it when I see it.
  • Mike0902 - Wednesday, June 8, 2016 - link

    Just as an after thought, if you only want to use your phone for calling and texting through the day go into the settings and turn off mobile data. No app can drain power then.

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