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Our quick take

Asus Zenfone 5 - 4.0 / 5

Design

  • Metal body frame with glass rear design Finishes: Meteor Silver / Midnight Blue Rear positioned fingerprint scanner 3.5mm headphone jack 153 x 76 x 7.7mm; 165g

Screen

  • 6.2-inch Super IPS+ display Full HD+ resolution (2246 x 1080) DCI-P3 colour support Notch (can be software hidden) 90% screen-to-body ratio

Hardware and performance

  • Qualcomm Snapdragon 636 processor, 4GB RAM 3,300mAh battery capacity, USB-C fast-charging 64GB on-board storage, microSD card slot for expansion Android 8.1 OS with Asus ZenUI 5 re-skin

Cameras

  • Dual 12-megapixel rear cameras, f/1.8 aperture Sony IMX363 sensor, 1.4µm large pixel size 4-axis optical image stabilisation Super-wide second lens, 120 degree field-of-view (standard is 83 degrees) AI photography automatic scene recognition 8MP front-facing camera, f/2.0 aperture

To recap

Overall, the Zenfone 5 is a solid backbone mid-price smartphone from which Asus can evolve and progress. It gets enough right to make it worthy of consideration, but with Honor, Moto and Nokia all knocking on Asus’ door (often for less money), it’s also got its work cut out.