text: Asus ZenFone Selfie: Asus Zenfone Selfie review | Gadgets Now
  The latest Zenfone model to enter the melee is the Zenfone Selfie, which aims to lure the Instagram generation. We aim to discover exactly how good this smartphone in our Asus Zenfone Selfie review…
  | TOI Tech | Updated: Aug 6, 2015, 02:35PM IST
  1. Good front and rear cameras
  Asus ZenFone Selfie is among the few smartphones in the market to sport 13MP front and rear cameras. Other key features of the smartphone include 5.5-inch Full HD screen, Snapdragon 615 processor, 2/4GB RAM options, Android 5.0 (Lollipop), 16GB internal storage, and microSD card support (up to 64GB).
  When Asus launched Zenfone 2 in India, it brought as many as three variants of the smartphone under Rs 20,000. And the latest Zenfone model to enter the melee is the Zenfone Selfie, which (as the name pretty much suggests) aims to lure the Instagram generation.
  Asus Zenfone 2 has 13MP cameras on the front as well as the back. This should be enough to capture the attention of selfie addicts, but we aim to discover exactly how good this smartphone in our Asus Zenfone Selfie review…
  Let's discuss what matters the most in this smartphone first: the cameras.
  The two 13MP cameras of this smartphone boast of the five-prism Largan lens and Toshiba sensors, and are backed by dual-tone, dual-LED flash. You even get laser autofocus with the rear camera, for faster focus; among the few smartphones to have this technology are OnePlus 2, LG G4, and Asus's Zenfone Laser.
  The front camera comes with Asus's PixelMaster imaging technology and aperture of f/2.2, which is good but not great. The camera app comes with a number of shooting modes, like Beautification, Auto, Manual, Night, Low Light, and even HDR and Depth of Field.
  The photos we took with the front camera in daylight turned out great, offering great level of details and balanced colours. However, some images taken in Auto mode were a little overexposed.
  (Front Camera -- Auto)
  The photos we captured indoors, under ample lighting, suffered from a lot of noise, despite sufficient details. Shots taken in the dark in Night and Low Light modes with the dual-LED flash turned on were a little better in terms of noise, though you can still notice the grains in the background. Changing Noise Reduction under Settings help a little, but not much.
  Depth of Field effect did not work with the front camera, though the option is present in the camera app.
  (Front camera -- Beautification)
  Beautification mode lets you set timer of up to 5 seconds while capturing photos; shots taken in this mode remove all imperfections from your face, and like Beauty modes in other phones, give a glazed look to the photo. However, under lowlight conditions, photos touched up by Beautification mode will be the best for Facebook, Instagram etc.
  The front camera has an 88-degree wide-angle lens, so you can include a couple of friends easily in your selfies.
  The rear camera's laser autofocus works well enough, getting the focus on the object within seconds. Photo quality by the rear camera is similar to what we saw with the front camera, offering similar levels of details, contrast and colours. However, you get a little less noise in lowlight situations, due to the relatively wider f/2.0 aperture.
  (Rear camera -- Auto mode)
  (Rear camera -- HDR mode)
  As expected, photos taken in daylight turn out pretty great.
  The real test was under lowlight conditions, where the Low Light mode performed better than Night mode, though you can notice overexposure at the back. HDR mode, surprisingly, is not very effective, which is rather odd since Zenfone 2's HDR performance is pretty good.
  (Rear camera -- Night mode)
  Fortunately for the rear camera, the Depth of Field feature works well here, though we were not able to get the desired effect every time we tried it.
  (Depth of Field)
  One major problem we had with the camera performance of Asus Zenfone Selfie is with image processing. The phone takes a lot of time in processing images once you shoot is rather high, something we are inclined to blame on the software rather than the chipset.
  On the design side, Asus Zenfone Sefie is nearly identical to Zenfone 2, except the addition of the laser autofocus setup on the back and the huge camera system in the front. So you get the same plastic body with metallic chin, and sloping back cover. And Asus has still not changed the awkward placement of the keys: the Volume button is still on the back, while the Power button is on top. And for some reason, the company has still not made the soft-touch Back, Home, and Tasks keys backlit.
  Overall, the look of the Zenfone 2 series works well enough, though we would like the button placement to change and keys to be backlit. Nevertheless, it seems the current design language is here to stay, and fortunately it is not too difficult to adjust to.
  Asus Zenfone Selfie comes with the same 5.5-inch Full HD (1080x1920p) screen as the top-end Zenfone 2 model. However, one major difference between the two is the inclusion of Gorilla Glass 4 in the selfie smartphone, which makes it more resistant to scratches compared to its older sibling.
  The display quality remains pretty similar, but the viewing angles are a little worse this time around. The colours are still very warm, but you can adjust them in Settings; however, changing colour temperature adds a bluish tinge to the screen instead of fixing the colours.
  Brightness and contrast levels are pretty good, and you would have no problem in reading text under direct sunlight.
  Apart from the cameras, one major difference between Zenfone Selfie and Zenfone 2 is the chipset. Instead of Intel processors, Asus has gone for Qualcomm's mid-end octa-core Snapdragon 615 processor that is designed on 64-bit CPU architecture. Running at clock speed of 1.7GHz, this processor is backed by 3GB RAM, which makes Zenfone Selfie among the few phones under Rs 20,000 to offer more than 2GB system memory.
  The smartphone packs 32GB of in-built storage, and supports microSD cards of capacities up to 128GB too. Both sim-card slots of the new Asus smartphone are compatible with India's 4G network bands. Like Zenfone 2, the new model comes with a 3,000mAh non-removable battery.
  Asus Zenfone Selfie runs on the same ZenUI software that we have seen in Zenfone 2. In fact, the software and UI are exactly the same, offering the same options as the new range of Zenfones.
  The Android 5.0 (Lollipop)-based ZenUI has a lot of bloatware and duplicate apps (we seriously don't need a separate browser app when you preload Google Chrome). Here too, you can't uninstall these preloaded apps but at least you can disable them.
  The software supports double tap to wake up screen, gestures, one-hand operations, and glove mode (which allows you to operate the touchscreen even while wearing gloves).
  Asus has given a few options personalization options, like customizing what toggles to show when you bring down the notifications bar. You can also select what long-pressing the Tasks key will do: take a screenshot, show menu, or do nothing. The software also lets you choose where to store apps when you download them: internal storage or microSD card.
  The phone has an Easy Mode, which removes most of the UI elements and makes the phone easier to use with the help of big icons and simple layout. You can choose which apps and widgets to add on the homescreen.
  Asus also lets you select the homescreen options, the menu layout, and gives a number of themes, wallpapers, scroll effects, and icon packs when you long-press the homescreen.
  In terms of operations, we have always been pleased with the ease-of-use and how smooth the user experience. As was the case with Zenfone 5 and Zenfone 2, we suffered no lag while operating Zenfone Selfie.
  The Snapdragon 615 processor of Zenfone 2 is a mid-end workhorse, and you don't expect it to perform like a flagship. However, we found it delivers a performance just as fast as that of the Zenfone 2's 2.3GHz Intel Atom Z3580 chip; in fact, the animations this time seem slicker. Asus Zenfone Selfie is also faster than Sony Xperia M4 Aqua, which runs on the same chipset.
  With 3GB of RAM at its disposal, Zenfone Selfie is able to handle all apps and games thrown its way. Even heavy games like Asphalt 8 do not stress the chipset, as it handles the resource hog with ease. Unlike the Snapdragon Xiaomi Mi4i, the smartphone does not heat up much.
  One problem we had with Zenfone 2 was the battery life, which is not a problem with Zenfone Selfie. The 3,000mAh battery of the selfie phone delivers battery life of approximately a day and a half with moderate usage and just over one day with heavy usage. We had two social media accounts and two emails ID on sync the whole day, and played video games and stream videos on YouTube for an hour each day during the review period.
  One of the weak areas for Zenfone Selfie is the multimedia performance. The less-than-perfect viewing angles make it unsuitable for sharing the handset with a friend while watching videos. Moreover, the loudspeaker on the back is not loud enough to our liking, even though the sound quality is pretty good and remains clear even at high volumes.
  Asus Zenfone Selfie is a great addition to the sub-Rs 20,000 segment, and will be a good rival to OnePlus One, Xiaomi Mi 4 and its own sibling Zenfone 2. The camera quality is quite good though overexposure (in daylight) and noise (at night) may be turnoffs for some.
  Nevertheless, Asus Zenfone Selfie is a very good smartphone under Rs 20,000 and offers a great package. If you are considering buying this selfie smartphone, then you would be more than satisfied with the performance.