If there's one trend in the smartphone category that has grown immensely - and refuses to die down - is selfies. A few years ago, the term 'selfie' crept into the lexicon and has made a comfortable space for itself. Clicking selfies is a trend that has cut across all age groups and social media boom has only added to the hysteria.
Smartphone makers earlier concentrated on bettering the pixel count but selfies altered that strategy drastically. Selfie smartphones are now upping the ante with dual selfie cameras and Asus is the latest entrant in the segment. With as many as three selfie smartphone launches under its Zenfone Series, Asus looks serious about the trend. We got our hands on the most expensive of the lot -- the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro -- the company's first to sport a dual selfie camera. We tested the device for some time and here is our complete review of it.
Design and display
Smartphone makers earlier concentrated on bettering the pixel count but selfies altered that strategy drastically. Selfie smartphones are now upping the ante with dual selfie cameras and Asus is the latest entrant in the segment. With as many as three selfie smartphone launches under its Zenfone Series, Asus looks serious about the trend. We got our hands on the most expensive of the lot -- the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro -- the company's first to sport a dual selfie camera. We tested the device for some time and here is our complete review of it.
Design and display
For starters, Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie is a really striking looking smartphone. The smartphone is quite sleek and is designed for the stylish selfie lovers out there. The device flaunts a metal unibody and comes with diamond-cut chamfered edges. The smartphone comes with a smooth matte finish on the rear panel and has antenna lines running on both top and bottom. The device has a 5.5-inch full HD display which is dominated by dual Selfie camera, soft LED flash and three capacitive buttons. There is also a pill shaped fingerprint sensor placed in the centre bottom of the display which doubles up as a home button. The volume rockers and power button are placed on the right side, while the SIM card tray is located on the left. The bottom of the smartphone is home to USB Type C charging port, 3.5mm audio jack and a speaker grill. The rear of the device consists of a 16MP camera with LED flash and Asus branding. We were quite impressed by the design of the Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro. Despite the large display, the smartphone is lightweight and easy to use with one hand.
The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro features a 5.5-inch full HD display with 1080x1920 pixel resolution. The 2.5D curved glass display comes with a coating of Corning Gorilla Glass to protect it from scratches. The display offers crisp colour reproduction along with good visibility under direct sunlight. The smartphone also has a 'screen colour mode', which further enables users to customise the display as per their need. Users can adjust the colour temperature, set a blue light filter and customise it according to their viewing requirements.
Performance and camera
The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie comes with is powered by a 2.0GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor paired with 4GB of RAM. The device comes with 64GB internal storage which can be expanded up to 128GB by adding microSD card. During our time with the device, we didn't face any performance-related issues. Multitasking was smooth and multiple heavy editing apps were used at the same time without any hassle. Talking about gaming, the smartphone performed well in that particular area as well. We were able to play heavy graphic intensive games with great ease without any visible lag. We also didn't encounter any particular heating issues with the smartphone. Overall, the smartphone gets thumbs up from us in the performance segment.
The device comes with hybrid dual SIM functionality, which means that you can use either two SIM cards or one SIM card and one microSD card at a time. During out testing, we noticed no problem in the call quality and even the signal reception was fine.
We ran Antutu and GeekBench 4 tests on the device. While the smartphone scored 66057 in Antutu Benchmarks, the single-core and multi-core scores on GeekBench 4 were 881 and 4290 respectively.
The device is backed by a 3,000 mAh battery with fast charging support. The battery backup is impressive and it easily lasted a day of heavy usage.
Talking about the audio quality, the company has incorporated five-magnet speakers driven by a powerful NXP Smart AMP in the smartphone, which promises to offer rich and crisp audio experience even on high volume. The smartphone also comes equipped with company's own AudioWizard technology which enables users to customise their listening experience.
Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro runs Android 7.1.1 Nougat operating system topped with the company's own Zen UI 4.0. This time the company has removed all the extra bloatware apps and the Zen UI is simpler and faster. The new Zen UI consists of features like auto face tagging in Gallery, Safeguard that automates communications in emergencies, Page Marker which helps you bookmark web pages and more. The smartphone also some with an app drawer, where one can keep all the apps and prevent the home screen from getting cluttered.
The camera is the USP of Asus Zenfone Selfie Pro. The smartphone sports a 24MPDuoPixel selfie camera with soft LED flash and a 16MP rear camera with LED flash. The main selfie camera features a Sony IMX362 dual pixel image sensor with Asus DuoPixel camera technology. The 24MP selfie camera comes with F1.8 aperture lens combined with the Asus SuperPixel technology, which claims to offer good low light selfies. The other 120 degree wide-angle lens camera helps in taking wide angle selfies. Apart from photos, the dual selfie camera is also capable of recording 4K selfie videos. The selfies we clicked were impressive and the beatification feature enhanced them. The dual selfie camera also enables users to take selfies with bokeh effect, which means that now you can blur the background and capture your perfect selfie. Asus has also installed a selfie master app, which further allows the users to beautify and edit their selfies. The front camera also comes with a portrait mode for better selfies.
Coming to the rear camera, the Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro comes with a 16MP rear camera with LED flash. The camera reproduced crisp and clear images with great amount of detailing. The colour reproduction was also good. The images captured in broad daylight were first-rate , however, images captured indoor were a bit noisy.
Verdict
The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie comes with a price tag of Rs 23,999. Designed specifically for selfie lovers, the USP of the smartphone is its dual selfie camera. Other than this all the other specifications are similar to any budget smartphone available in the market. The price of the phone is a huge deterrent even though the performance and looks of the phone do stand out. There are alternatives like the Vivo V7+ which sells for Rs 21,999 if you're looking for a selfie smartphone. The Asus Zenfone 4 Selfie delivers what it promises but perhaps isn't worth the price it commands. In that sense, Asus might have just scored a self(ie) goal!
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