Asus are probably better known for their laptops, but they have been making smartphones that have been flying under the radar for many years. Their latest offering, the ZenFone 6, may change all that though.
It appears to have been designed deliberately to stand out from the mid-range crowd it sits in with its clever flip camera and big battery. So, is it worth the £500 or so you would have to shell out to get it?
Flip Camera
The camera is the main visual standout on the Asus ZenFone 6. It is a dual lens array, with a Sony 48MP main backed up by a 13MP ultra-wide. This array is housed in a metal block that rotates around 180 degrees, so that you can use both cameras for selfies as well. This means that the 6.4” LCD screen is completely uninterrupted by notches or cut-outs and fills the front of the phone to within a few mm of the edges.
The camera combination is pretty good with excellent HDR+ processing letting you shoot most subjects well without too much thought or effort. The movable camera is great for panoramas with the phone moving it across your chosen landscape automatically. There is also a night mode for clearer shots in the dark. Finally, remember all this camera functionality is available for your selfies as well.
Enormous Battery
The Asus ZenFone 6 packs the 855 Snapdragon chip together with 128 or 256GB of storage and 6 or 8GB of RAM. So, well equipped in that area. The battery though, is the other big standout of the phone with a whopping 5,000 mAH one that Asus claims will keep it going happily for 2 days. It also has a claimed standby time of 26 days – more than comparable to most feature phones - as well as a talk time of up to 33 hours.
So, is it worth the £500 or so being asked for it currently? Well, it certainly sits well with other phones in this mid-range in terms of ‘bangs per buck’ but it is not the best specified or best looking of the bunch.
But, if you are looking for a some a little different, like new tech (such as the motorised camera) and want an enormous battery on your phone, then the Asus ZenFone 6 is right up your street.
