[ENG] Hands-on ASUS ZenFone 5 Series (ZenFone 5, 5Z,)

So this right here is the Zenfone 5. The brand new flagship smartphone that ASUS has just announced and there's a say that it has the iPhone X's notch. ASUS will tell you that it's 26% smaller but it is the iPhone's notch. Like the iPhone, if you swipe down from the left edge you get one set of notifications and functions. You swipe down from the right, you get the full set of quick settings but otherwise, this doesn't have anything comparable to Face ID on the iPhone.

All you really have here is a front-facing camera, a few sensors as usual that usually get in the bezel. And you do get a face unlock but it's not as sophisticated as the Face ID on the iPhone. Aside from notch on the top, you do also get a bit of a bezel at the bottom unlike the iPhone. With that being said, this ASUS phone with a very minimal bezel wherever you look, it's got a 90% screen to body ratio. It does actually have an LCD display rather than OLED which is the more popular and high quality display at the moment but I do like it. This LCD is gold, it's a very good one but if you take a look at the back of it it comes in blue and silver options and it is a fingerprint magnet like most smartphones nowadays. This is why you will need, as an essential accessory, a cloth as I always keep with myself. You can tidy it up nice and clean and then I can show you the new dual-camera on the back.

Now, ASUS is doing something with this, where they bundled a whole bunch of so-called AI features. I don't know how much it really lives up to the quoted viv AI and being intelligent. But the highlight with this camera, for me is that it has 1.4 micron pixels on the inside, a 12 megapixel sensor, also has a wide-angle camera which you use this for depth detection for portrait mode, you get 1.4 micron pixels in the ACU-11 which takes awesome photos. Slightly larger than the Google Pixel which again takes awesome photos. So this is promising, just in terms of pure image quality and then the AI stuff, I guess you can take it or leave it. It's worth pointing out in terms of the display upgrade that ASUS has made.

This is the Zenfone 4, which is a 5.5 inch screen and the new Zenfone 5 is a 6.2 inch screen and a smaller footprint. So just in terms of ASUS devices, this is a massive upgrade. This is a full HD glass display, its got a 19 by nine ratio which means it's 2000 something times 1080 pixels, in terms of resolution. So in terms of the basic specs, what you get here is Qualcomm Snapdragon 636, so it's not the flagship tier processor but that being said, there's also Zenfone 5 Zed which has a Snapdragon 845 and I was going to price it $499 which is quite affordable and going back to the iPhone comparison, it's half of the price of an iPhone X.

That does mean that the Zenfone and ASUS is also introducing a Zenfone 5 Lite as well which is going to be even cheaper. Although, that is almost entirely the most from the Zenfone 5, it has an entirely different design, still thin bezels though. It has dual cameras front and back, Final highlight, something that I've tested for myself here at MWC is the speaker on this thing. It has a really loud speaker. It doesn't that have much in the way of face or high-end, so it isn't like any sort of audio file quality. For the phone speakers you're really looking for volume rather than anything else and quality of high volumes and that's what this phone achieves. Also worth mentioning, it also have a headphone jack so congrats to ASUS for that.

The Zenfone 5 and its iPhone aping notch will be available from April but ASUS hasn't yet specified a price rate. As I say though, the which will be available quite a bit later in June is priced at $499 so you can expect the five to be a little bit cheaper than the 5 Lite that will be a little bit cheaper more.  Yet, a bigger bezel at the bottom than the iPhone.