Asus Zenfone devices have done well in the past. In a sea of phones sold by Chinese competitors, the Taiwanese brand has succeeded in carving a name for itself. It’s the third year for Zenfones and Asus has already launched a bunch of Zenfone 3s. As confusing as their nomenclature can be (Asus, you really gotta work on it), the Zenfone 3 Deluxe is very distinct from the rest of the Zenfone 3 range.
For starters, it’s the most expensive Zenfone 3 yet, and packs in top-of-the-line hardware and improved design. But does the Zenfone 3 Deluxe have enough to sway you from Samsung, Google or even Apple’s flagship phones when you’re competing in the same price bracket? Let’s find out.
We liked the regular Zenfone 3’s design when we reviewed it a few months back and Zenfone 3 Deluxe is no different. Asus has evidently made both the Zenfone 3 offerings look different, which is a good move, in our opinion. The Zenfone 3 Deluxe still has elements of ‘Zen’, seen in the concentric circles on the front, but the back goes completely matte. Coupled with the metal unibody, it certainly seems to justify the phone’s hefty price tag. It’s just 4.2mm at its thinnest point — making the back camera protrude — weighs 170g and feels good in the hand. The ports and buttons are neatly placed alongside the phone, with the fingerprint sensor placed at the back, just beneath the camera. The antennas are completely invisible and boast chamfered edges along with thin bezels around the display, that add to the overall looks.
Speaking of the display, Zenfone 3 Deluxe features a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED Full HD panel with Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protecting the display. As we’ve seen with AMOLED panels, the colours are vibrant with deep blacks. While we don’t have a problem with that, for customers who want precision, the phone also comes with a screen colour mode that allows to tweak the colour temperature along with hue and saturation. There’s blue-light filter as well to protect eyes from fatigue and Tru2Life tech for outdoor readability.
Asus has two Zenfone 3 Deluxe variants that differentiate themselves in terms of processor and storage. One comes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 820 processor and 64GB of internal storage, whereas the one we are reviewing here packs a Snapdragon 821 processor and 256GB of internal storage. In retrospect, there’s not much to set both variants apart, but who wouldn’t like 256GB of fast UFS 2.0 built-in storage? Additionally, the hybrid SIM slot ensures you can expand the storage through microSD card slot (up to 128GB) or opt for the 100GB of Google Drive cloud storage (for up to two years).
In terms of performance, the phone is extremely smooth, thanks to the faster processor and 6GB LPDDR4 RAM. The RAM is, in fact, coupled with OptiFlex technology that enables the phone to launch apps quickly and can keep up to 33 apps running in the background. The phone supports 2x2 MIMO for faster Wi-Fi transfer speeds, USB Type-C 3.0 and LTE with VoLTE support, which unfortunately turned out to be a dud for our review unit, until Asus pushed out a new firmware update during the course of our review.
On the camera side, the phone features a 23MP camera sensor with f/2.0 aperture and PixelMaster 3.0 software tech. The image quality is good with TriTech autofocus allowing to focus quickly on the subject in about 0.03s. The camera app also boasts a number of shooting modes to aid in a better picture. Video-wise, the back camera is capable of capturing videos in up to 4K. The front camera sports an 8MP sensor and offers the usual set of modes, like beautification, that helps to improve the quality of selfies.
The 3,000mAh battery lasts about a day, but the good thing is that it supports Quick Charge 3.0, which can charge to up to 60 per cent in 39 minutes. The fingerprint sensor is also quick; it unlocks the phone in just about 0.2s and can be used to open the camera app and even click the picture once the camera is activated.
Zenfone 3 Deluxe comes with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box, with a heavily-customised user interface called ZenUI. Into its third iteration, just like the Zenfone series, the interface does add some new tricks and improves on the existing ones. The UI adds an Always-on panel that keeps the screen on all the time, showing the clock, missed calls, SMS and battery charge. The implementation of Always-on seems basic at the moment, but we wouldn’t be surprised if Asus adds more elements to it, just like we have in Samsung and LG phones. A bunch of Asus apps also come pre-loaded on the device, like Game Genie, ZenCircle, ZenMotion, Mobile Manager. That said, Asus also bundles a couple of EA games, TripAdvisor, etc, which we feel is totally unnecessary.
This is, by far, the best Zenfone device Asus has produced.
And if you’re looking for a Zenfone specifically, there are no major issues to turn you off (except that it still runs on Android 6).
Asus Zenfone 3 Deluxe
PRICE ₹49,999
URL www.asus.com/in
DIMENSIONS 156.4x77.4x7.5m
WEIGHT 170g
DISPLAY
5.7-inch Full HD
(1920x1080)
CPU Snapdragon 821 (2.4 GHz) / Snapdragon 820 quad core (2.15 GHz)
RAM 6GB
INTERNAL STORAGE 64GB/256GB (expandable)
CAMERA 23MP (main), 8MP (front)
BATTERY 3000mAh
