ASUS had officially announced the Zenfone Zoom in India in the last week of January 2016 and it went on sale for Rs 37,999. The device was first showcased in CES 2015 along with Zenfone 2. The company took almost a year to bring this device into production. ASUS claims that the Zenfone Zoom is world’s thinnest 3X optical zoom on a smartphone. ZenFone Zoom is engineered to embed 10-element lenses for 3X Optical Zoom while still keep the device as thin as 11.95mm. It’s the world’s thinnest 3X optical smartphone offering up to 12X zoom-in effect.
Here is the unboxing and first impressions of the Zenfone Zoom.
Here is the unboxing video.
Inside the box:
- Zenfone Zoom
- Lanyard
- USB Cable
- Earphone
- Charger
- Manuals
The Zenfone Zoom has quite a lot of changes compared to Zenfone 2 and Zenfone Deluxe, the two devices which share the same hardware. The rear panel has been given a leather finish and looks good. The large 13MP camera with dual tone LED flash, laser autofocus and 3X optical zoom protrudes out considerably giving a similar feel like Lumia 1020. The rear panel also houses the ASUS and Intel branding along with the speaker unit.
The phone has a metallic chassis and has power and volume keys on the right side. Since the device is a camera centric phone, it comes with dedicated keys for capturing photos and record videos. The sides of the phone have also been given a premium finishing. The micro USB charging slot sits at the bottom while the audio jack is at the top. The front panel is quite familiar with the ASUS logo, 5.5 inches Full HD display, three capacitive buttons and the pattern at the bottom. The device is pretty heavy at 185gms and considerably thick at 12mm.
Overall, in the build quality, this is the best so far from ASUS.
The phone comes with a 5.5 inch Full HD display (IPS LCD) with 1920 X 1080p resolution and Corning Gorilla Glass 4 protection. The display isn’t as vibrant and sharp as many of the devices in this price point. In fact, it feels dull at times and doesn’t give a feel of a premium flagship. The touch response is quite good. The phone comes with 128GB of internal storage which is very good and offers almost close to 110GB of useable storage. If you still feel the storage is short, there is micro SD expansion slot. The battery capacity is at 3000mAh and supports fast charging and you can recharge the phone to 100% in almost 1.5 hours.
The phone is powered by a 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Atom Z3590 processor coupled with PowerVR G6430 GPU and 4GB of RAM. This is the same processor which powers the Zenfone 2 as well. While the Zen UI is a heavily skinned UI with a lot of bloatware, it still gives you great performance.
The phone comes with a 13MP camera on the rear with world’s thinnest 3x optical zoom and has an innovative 10-element HOYA lens arrangement for crisp detail. It can be extended to 12X via digital zoom. The front camera is a 5MP shooter. The camera is one of the strong aspects of the phone and ASUS has managed to pack a 3X optical zoom in such a small form factor. It also packs optical image stabilization (OIS), dual-LED Real Tone flash and laser auto focus.
We will have the detailed camera review soon, so stay tuned.
The device is priced Rs 37,999 and is available on Flipkart. We will have the detailed review coming up on our blog soon, meanwhile do check out our YouTube channel for more videos on this device.
