Foreword
As we approached the era of highly competitive mobile war in the mid range market, every smartphone companies are using their best strategy to survive in the price battle. One of the successful representative that has managed to stand on their ground among its competition is none other than the Taiwan powerhouse, Asus.
Asus uses the Zenfone series as their special weapon to challenge the mid range market that managed to get rid of the “low cost device only offers weak performance” title.
During the launch of Zenfone series in the local market, it ran out of stock a few occasions due to its fairly affordable price and impressive performance.
With such huge success achieved in our market, Asus new Zenfone lineup this year will undoubtedly attracts consumers attention too.
Zenfone 2 —— The World’s first 4GB RAM smartphone featuring a refreshed exterior design and powered by an all new 64-bit Intel SoC, bundled with an affordable price tag created a mass fervor and once again became one of the most discussed smartphone in town!
So how well does this Asus latest smartphone perform, let our review tell you all you need to know about the Zenfone 2!
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Exterior Design
On the front panel, Zenfone 2 adopts the same design language as its predecessors. It has a curvy body and the concentric-circle pattern under the display remains unchanged. Its light refraction makes it looks a class above others.
The Asus logo is situated on top alongside the ear speaker, 5 megapixel front-facing camera and the hidden notification LED light.
There are three capacitive keys below the display which from left to right are Back key, Home key and Recent App keys. Sadly, these keys are not backlitted so it could be troublesome to use during low light conditions.
The main changes we noticed on the new Zenfone 2 is seen on the rear cover where the volume rocker is placed below the camera. This placement is first used on the LG G2, but Asus did not fully imitate LG’s way as they move the power button to the top of the device instead of the back. Its loud speaker is placed below of the rear cover.
The rear cover of the phone is using plastic material with brush metal finish on top, its rough matte-frosted surface helps avoid fingerprints and smudges.
With its curvy body design and matte-frosted touch feel, no doubt it deserves our vote for comfort grip on hand.
Other than that, the rear cover is removable, but it only allows us to place the SIM card and Micro SD card, the battery is non-removable sadly speaking.
However, there are a large varieties of beautifully designed rear covers for users to choose in Asus official website that lets you personalize your phone according to your likings.
The power button placed on top of the phone is a Big NO to us because at the size of 5.5 inch, it is not convenient to press it to be frank.
On the bright side, this time Asus is smart enough to include Zen Motion screen gesture that allows users to double tap the screen to wake the phone. We are definitely happy with this feature!
There isn’t any button on both side of the device. The Zenfone 2’s depth is 10.9mm, but with its curvy back design it makes the phone looks ultra slim from the side which goes down to 3.9mm only on the thinnest part! This curvy design lies firmly on our palm which provide an overall comfortable gripping experience.
Both power and volume buttons uses metal material, with the Asus trademark concentric-circle design added on the surface of the buttons it definitely increases the identification of the Zenfone 2.
Conclusion
Although Zenfone 2 maintain the design language from the first generation Zenfone series, it also tries to adopt other manufacturer’s idea such as following LG G3’s volume button placement.
Regardless of the similarities, Zenfone 2 in fact make a breakthrough on its design and the main concern here is that how Asus is going to strengthen its own characteristics in the design language.
Besides that, even though Asus uses plastic as the main material of the rear cover, it cleverly adopts brushed metal finish design on it which improved its texture drastically.
Its rounded and curvy design also provides a firm grip on hand.
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Head over to MDroid website for the FULL REVIEW of ASUS Zenfone 2 ZE551ML.