ASUS Zenfone 6 Review: flippin’ awesome

this here is the asus zenfone 6 it's what some people are calling a budget flagship smartphone which means that spec sheet is packed with 95% of what the most expensive devices have to offer with a price that's substantially lower naturally there are a few trade-offs that you have to be made when you're looking at a device like this you get a traditional fingerprint sensor on the back no wireless charging a six point four inch LCD panel versus AMOLED with a lowest resolution at Full HD Plus but buying this phone here won't set you back $1,000 and it won't even cost you

The six hundred and seventy dollars that oneplus is charging for the seven pro in fact you'll only be paying 499 and for that price you still get a snapdragon 855 processor eight gigabytes of RAM only 64 gigabytes of storage but that can be bumped up to 128 or 256 and $50 increments and then there is a massive 5,000 milliamp hour battery inside of here but the cherry on top is the camera system you get two cameras on the back a standard 48 megapixel camera and then a 13 megapixel one with an ultra wide lens but there is no front-facing camera and that's because this features a flip up

Camera mechanism that allows you to use those same sensors from the back as your selfie cameras as well now we'll be coming back to that in a minute but first let's cover the basics besides the flip up camera mechanism the phone's hardware is a bit bland you get a standard aluminum frame sandwich between gorilla glass on the front and the back the only buttons are located on the right edge the blue accented power button is a nice touch but the real highlight here is the customizable smart key above the volume rocker which can be customized for a single double or even a

Long press you can use more than a dozen different actions including triggering the Google assistant taking a screenshot changing sound profiles automatically taking a picture and much more but the one thing that you can't do is set it to open a specific app which is a little bit unfortunate over the years asus has been playing around with customizing android so the software experience hasn't always been the best but with the zenfone 6 they've actually done a really good job of cleaning things up and giving you a nearly stock Android experience the default launcher

Does have a few Asus unique customizations which are actually pretty handy and I do love the ability to use custom icons which you can download directly from the Play Store allowing you to give your phone a unique look without having to install a third-party launcher and then on the home screen to the very far left they've also included the Google feed which I really appreciate on the performance side there's nothing too surprising here it's running a Snapdragon 855 processor with 8 gigabytes of RAM so it's on par with most other flagship devices of 2019

That's to say that gaming and RAM management is pretty much excellent but unlike some devices which have started using machine learning to optimize performance based on which apps that you use the most the zenfone 6 takes a manual approach to this with optiplex which allows users to choose up to 10 applications so that the launch slides are sped up and the apps are given priority over the others it actually works pretty well and does make a big difference if you have only a handful of apps that you use on a regular basis now with all of that out of the way let's

Get back to the camera on the Asus zenfone 6 what you're looking at here is a pretty simple setup you get a main 48 megapixel sensor for all your shots in your videos but then there's a secondary 13 megapixel sensor that's paired with an 11 millimeter ultra wide-angle lens now both of these can record 4k video but there is no electronic image stabilization which means there is a little bit of a crop when you turn on electronic image stabilization now this isn't an issue when you're recording on the back and taking video of other people but when you flip it around take

Video of yourself you definitely want to make sure you switch over to that ultra wide-angle lens just because you don't want to be cropped in and looking at a picture of this big of your face now the sensor that's paired with the ultra wide-angle lens isn't as good as the main 14 megapixel sensor which leads to darker pictures and video in low-light conditions but it does a splendid job outside or anytime that there's plenty of light in the shot as you know by now I'm a big fan of ultra wide-angle lenses on smartphones and I take this one any day

Over a smartphone that simply had a zoom lens overall image quality from both sensors isn't spectacular but that's what you expect from a $500 smartphone the main sensor can capture 48 megapixel images but by default it's set to a 12 megapixel setting with pixel binning and Asus Auto HDR system which boosts dynamic range and saturation for the images I actually did find that the camera struggled a little bit when set to 48 megapixels taking multiple seconds to save an image after they were captured and often failing to capture the first image that you take when

Opening the camera app unlike most other devices these days you do get a dedicated nighttime shooting mode but it's definitely not as good as what you get out of Google's pixel devices the flip up camera module also has a unique way of capturing panorama shots rather than having to move the camera on your own to capture 180 degree images simply hold the phone out at a 90 degree angle and the flip up camera will do the rest sometimes the stitching can be a little bit off but it sure beats having to follow the on-screen guide that you get on most other smartphones

I'd say the overall camera experience would be considered subpar when compared to other flagship devices but the Asus zenfone 6 has a truly unique capability allowing it to take some of the best selfies I've ever seen as we all know most smartphones use a smaller inferior sensor for their selfie cameras up front since there's not much room to fit them on top of the displays the flip up camera though allows your selfies to be just as good as the other pictures that you take with the rear camera with the bonus of having an ultra wide-angle lens as well which allows you to cram in more

Friends or an epic background into your shots up until now the pixel 3 has been my favorite smartphone to take selfies with simply because it had that ultra wide-angle lens as well but with a unique flip up camera of the Asus zenfone 6 I think this one here finally takes the crown as impressed as I am with the camera system inside this phone my favorite feature is actually the five thousand milliamp hour battery that's packed inside now that's not gonna get you two full days on a single charge since the six point four inch display is an LCD panel versus an Amal

But it will give you a day and a half and that's what's pushing it pretty much as hard as you want the only times I've actually been able to kill this phone in a single day is with at least 10 hours of screen on time which if you think about it is pretty much ridiculous since most people have about 16 hours of wait time during the day which means you'd be able to sit in front of this phone staring at it for hours for about 62 percent of your day time the flipside to having such a large battery though is taking a long time for it to charge even with the 18 watt quick charge 4.0

Charger that comes with the device if you do manage to run this battery down to zero you'll need to leave it on the charger for at least two and a half hours if you want to get it back up to a hundred percent they could have made things a little bit better by switching over to power delivery and including at least a 25 watt charger with this phone and swapping out the LCD panel for an AMOLED one to give the phone an extra hour or two of screen on time per charge but honestly that's simply nitpicking since the Asus zenfone 6 is one of the longest lasting smartphones currently on

The market if you're looking for the best of the best there are a lot of flagship options out there but if you don't want to spend $1,000 the Asus zenfone 6 is probably one of your best options considering that it only costs $500 you won't be able to find a better smartphone in that price category and if you do that device most likely wouldn't be able to take the same amazing selfies that you get from this front-facing camera be sure to jump into the comments and let me know what you think of the Asus zenfone 6 the phone is definitely not perfect but its unique camera system

Massive battery and low price point make it one of my favorite devices of 2019