Smartphone review ASUS ZenFone Zoom

Over the past year, ASUS has released at least two models of user-oriented smartphones that are not indifferent to photography - ZenFone Laser and ZenFone Selfie . But in terms of the capabilities of their optical system, these devices are not very different from “ordinary” smartphones. Now on sale is the ASUS ZenFone Zoom smartphone, equipped with a much more advanced camera, two-color flash and a laser focusing system.

Specifications

Platform : Android 5.0 (with ASUS ZenUI graphical shell)
Color : Black / White
Dimensions : 158.9 x 78.8 x 5 ~ 11.95 mm (L x W x H)
Weight : 185 g
Processor :
Intel Atom Quad Core Z3580 (2.3 GHz) with PowerVR G6430 graphic core (OpenGL ES 3.0 support)
Intel Atom Quad Core Z3590 (two cores can operate at frequencies up to 2.5 GHz) with PowerVR G6430 graphic core (OpenGL ES 3.0 support)
RAM : 4 GB LPDDR3 RAM
Data storage :
64 GB eMMC
128 GB eMCP Flash
Memory slot : micro-SD, up to 128 GB
Modem : Intel 7262
Wireless :
WLAN 802.11 a / b / g / n / ac
Bluetooth V4.0 + EDR
NFC
Supported Network Standards : UMTS / WCDMA / FDD-LTE
Data Rate :
HSPA +: Receive - 5.76 / Return - 42 Mbps
DC-HSPA +: Receive - 5.76 / return - 42 Mbps
LTE Cat4: reception - 50 / return - 150 Mbps
2G : GSM: 850MHz / 900MHz / 1800MHz / 1900MHz
3G : WCDMA: 850MHz / 900MHz / 1700MHz / 1900MHz / 2100MHz
4G : FDD-LTE: 2100MHz / 1900MHz / 1800MHz / 1700MHz AWS / 850MHz / 2600MHz / 900MHz / 700MHz / 800MHz
Support for different LTE bands varies by region. Make sure to support the necessary ranges in advance if you plan to use your ASUS smartphone outside the region in which it was purchased.
Navigation : GPS / GLONASS / QZSS / SBAS / BDS
Display : 5.5-inch IPS display, Full HD (1920x1080), 403 PPI, Corning Gorilla Glass 4
Battery : built-in lithium-polymer, 3000 mAh capacity
Cameras :
Front : 5 megapixels
Primary:

• 13 megapixels
• 3X optical zoom / 12X general zoom.
• Laser auto focus with a speed of 0.03 sec.
• Stabilizer 4 Stop OIS (Optical Image Stabilization).
• 10-element lens (lenses from HOYA).
• Maximum shutter speed 32 sec.
• Two-color LED flash.
• Minimum focusing distance 5 cm.

Audio output : 3.5 mm
Sensors : accelerometer / electronic compass / gyroscope / proximity sensor / light sensor / Hall sensor.

Appearance

ZenFone Zoom tries to impress already with the packaging. Instead of the usual brick box that opens like a matchbox, the smartphone comes in a box box.





The contents of the box inspire thoughts about expensive accessories even more.







The smartphone comes with a charger with a USB-micro USB cable and channel plug-in headphones-headset with two pairs of interchangeable ear pads.





The sound channels of the headphones are located at an angle to the body.







On the wire of the right “ear” lurked a remote control with a button and a microphone.





The front side of the ZenFone Zoom is made in the style of the entire Zen line: clean lines, a minimum of detail, rounded corners and a decorative panel with a concentric pattern.







The back side looks much more unusual. First of all, the surface catches your eye: it looks like a smartphone is studded with leather. Even along the rib-stop under the fingers there is a double thread firmware.







It looks solid. The surface is smooth and hard to the touch, so I suspected a very high-quality plastic imitation. However, on the manufacturer’s website it is indicated that Zoom is indeed covered in leather. I took off the back cover, which turned out to be completely plastic and thin enough inside. The edges of the lid are a tiny plastic rim, that is, the outer coating itself - if this coating - was flush with this rim. That is, it was not possible to detect a skin slice. Studying the surface under the magnifying glass yielded nothing: I did not find pores characteristic of the skin, but there was no clear evidence of plastic origin either. And then my attention was drawn to the slots for the speaker. Armed with a magnifying glass, I photographed them at an angle.



Indeed, the skin. Surely she underwent additional processing in order to increase wear resistance. ASUS engineers managed to very evenly apply the skin to the plastic cover, the edges do not scrub anywhere. By the way, the characteristic texture of the material helps to hold a rather large device in your hand more reliably.

The ends of the smartphone are rounded, the edges do not cut into the palm of your hand. Despite the large size, the device lies in the hand quite comfortably. This contributes to the convex shape of the back cover.

At the top there is an audio jack and a microphone.



The second microphone is located on the bottom, along with a micro USB connector.



There, on the corner, there is a strap mount. A rather unusual detail in the world of modern smartphones, but very characteristic of another class of devices - cameras. What kind of transparently hints at a similar use case: the device can be carried literally at hand so as not to miss the successful shots.



The left side is completely clean.



And on the right side are all the controls: volume control, power button, camera control.



The camera is controlled by two buttons: large - photographing, small - video. The solution is quite successful: you won’t get confused with the buttons, but you don’t have to waste precious seconds switching to video and vice versa when shooting some dynamic events. In addition, when you have to control through the screen, you involuntarily change the framing, and spend a little more time to build the frame again. And the moment may already be missed.





Under the cover are slots for a SIM card and micro SD memory card. In the upper left corner is the resonant camera of the speaker.



On the inside of the lid is one of the antennas.

Sound

One of the advantages of ZenFone Zoom is its sound subsystem. According to information from the manufacturer, a speaker with five magnets is used here, placed in a resonant chamber. This design is designed to improve the range of reproduced frequencies and increase the volume. In addition, ZenFone Zoom uses software technology to enhance sound quality. In addition to everything, you can activate one of the five sound modes or play with a simple equalizer:





The smartphone is playing really really loudly. Sound modes are selected well and are quite consistent with their fields of application. The low frequency range is not as wide as we would like. But in general, the sound was worthy. Of course, you should not wait for HiFi-sound from this small speaker, although it is enclosed in a resonant camera. However, ZenFone Zoom sounds very good for its class.

The developers have worked on improving the microphone. Using software algorithms, echo formation is reduced and background noise is better suppressed.

I would also like to talk about the voice control function. To activate it, you need to click the microphone icon in the Google search bar. This software module can not only translate speech into search queries, but also run applications, initiate calls and write SMS for you.



In some cases, the system silently opens the search engine and enters the spoken phrase. But sometimes it can be very difficult to comment in a female voice in the style of "At your request, companies were found at a distance of no more than 4 km." A trifle, but nice.

The recognition function works very smartly. For 10 minutes I mocked at the system, pronouncing phrases pozakovyristee. And for all this time, not a dozen erroneous recognitions have been accumulated. At the same time, my diction is far from ideal.

Display

ZenFone Zoom uses a 5.5-inch display with Full HD resolution (1920 * 1080). IPS-matrix, high-quality oleophobic coating - gentleman's set. In my opinion, the diagonal-to-resolution ratio is perfect, because with a pixel density of 403 PPI, the image is perfectly smooth. Almost analog. There is no point in increasing the resolution with this size of the display: there is still no difference in the eye, but it creates an additional load on the processor and video chip, which reduces the operating time.

A curious detail: around the display there is no longer a barely noticeable protruding plastic side, which reduces the likelihood of scratches when you put the smartphone face down. In my opinion, this is due to the use of the newfangled Gorilla Glass 4 as a protective glass. It seems that the developers are very confident in its strength. Although there is another explanation: just a design feature.

Photography

Let's see what's so special about the ZenFone Zoom camera. By the way, the front camera is also quite tolerable. 5 MP - some smartphones still have main cameras with matrices with this resolution. But this is the only advantage of the front-end Zoom: a tiny lens does not allow you to walk around in terms of aperture.

But the main camera is much more interesting. The resolution of the matrix is ​​not the largest - 13 megapixels. Depending on the focal length, the minimum aperture value varies in the range of F2.7-4.8.



Firstly, a rather large lens, which indirectly indicates not the worst aperture. Secondly, the optical system consists of 10 lenses. To fit all these lenses into a smartphone, the developers had to apply a periscopic configuration:



This solution made it possible to realize two more “goodies”: a three-time optical zoom and a four-stage stabilizer. The zoom can be adjusted either with the classic zoom gesture (pinch / pinch), or with the sound adjustment buttons, it turns out much more convenient and accurate. When the zoom is changed, the scale and the current value appear on the screen for a short time: The



smartphone is equipped with a two-color flash, in which cold and warm LEDs are installed. The camera’s automation evaluates the lighting conditions and the presence of people in the frame, and at its own discretion doses the power of each of the LEDs. This helps to get a more natural skin tone.

Finally, the third “trick” of the smartphone is the laser backlight to accelerate autofocus. Do not worry, the laser will not burn your retina. Its power is very low, and it works unnoticed by humans. Judging by the faint flicker, a quick scan of the focus area is applied.

Let's move on to practical shooting. Unfortunately, Habr does not allow to load images over 4000 pixels on the long side. So I stung the images up to 1200 in length, and if you want to study the originals, you can download them in bulk .

The shooting was carried out in several modes:

• Auto
• Dim lighting. The frame resolution is reduced four times (from 4160 * 2340 to 2080 * 1170). Apparently, the pixel matrix is ​​divided into 2x2 blocks, and the signal of all four pixels is summed according to some algorithm.
• Ночь. Автоматически применяется вспышка.
• HDR.
• Суперразрешение. Разрешение кадра увеличивается в четыре раза (с 4160*2340 до 8320*4680). Судя по всему, осуществляется цифровое масштабирование.

The stabilizer is noticeable. But you need to understand that here is not a full-sized lens, and the range of movement of the lens unit (or matrix) is very limited. The stabilizer can still compensate for a small natural tremor, but if a strong wind shakes you - or some other reasons - then you will probably get a stir. In such situations, it is better to take a few frames, it will be more reliable.

The maximum video resolution is 1920 * 1080. An example can be downloaded from the link .

Wireless connection

ZenFone Zoom has an 802.11ac Wi-Fi module. In addition to the aforementioned antenna in the back cover, the smartphone is equipped with four more antennas:



For a more reliable signal, two antennas are used for communication with base stations - the main and auxiliary.

If you like traveling around the world, in addition to the camera, ZenFone Zoom can act as a navigator, since it supports as many as five satellite navigation systems: GPS, GLONASS, BDS , QZSS and other SBAS systems . About the last three, I learned only from Wikipedia.

Also, the smartphone is equipped with an NFC module. So far, this type of communication is not too common in our country, but abroad it will be easier to find application for it.

Software

The role of the operating system is the good old Android 5.0 with the familiar ZenUI graphical shell. You can download specially designed themes, free and paid.



Of the proprietary utilities here are the ubiquitous ShareLink, ZenTalk and Splendid. There is also a ZenFlash Camera application that supports external flash units for ASUS smartphones. On the desktop, helpfully laid out a shortcut program with the epic name "Power and Acceleration." It simply optimizes the contents of the RAM:



There is also a curious utility that allows you to use the laser focusing module as a rangefinder. It is enough to aim the sight at the object and click the measurement icon:

Performance

The "soul" of the smartphone - or its "brain" - is a four-core Intel Atom Quad Core Z3590 , made by the 22-nanometer process technology. As a graphics subsystem, the PowerVR G6430 is working. The amount of RAM dual-channel memory - 4 GB, this is more than enough for any mobile needs. And as much as 128 GB is allocated for data storage (a model with 64 GB is on sale). If this doesn’t seem enough to you, you can insert a 128 GB microSD card.

The responsiveness of the smartphone is excellent. As the military pilots say, “walks behind the handle”, that is, immediately responds to the movement of controls. Everything instantly opens, starts, downloads, installs, plays, whistles and dances. It takes two seconds to create pictures in Super Resolution mode.


The built-in battery capacity is 3000 mAh. There is also support for accelerated charging - for about 40-45 minutes, the battery is charged at 70%. It took about 1:15 to fully charge. In normal use - surfing, calls once every half an hour / hour, listening to music - the phone worked for 9.5 hours. Games and Full HD-films managed to land him in about 5.5 hours.

Conclusion

The smartphone turned out pretty interesting. Photo quality is noticeably better than previous models from ASUS. Although the weak point of the camera is shooting in low light conditions. But this is true for almost any smartphone.

In general, the ZenFone Zoom looks like a good accessory, and you won’t be squinted if you really wear it on the strap. The exterior is much nicer than most compact cameras, and the ZenFone Zoom will replace the numerous “soap dishes” with interest. So if you like taking pictures, but wearing a separate camera is unsuitable, then take a closer look at Zoom. High performance, large memory capacity, excellent design and a decent camera that is always at hand is a good option for capturing interesting and important moments in life.

Recommended retail price: 49,990 rubles.