These days, the mobile market in India is full of national and international brands offering devices with awesome sounding specifications at delicious prices. All that is well and good for the consumers. However, for me, a good smartphone is much more than its specifications. I like a phone that is full of well thought out and useful features. I love a smartphone that has the capacity to give me the delight of discovering new features and shortcuts for several days.
I have been using ASUS ZenFone 2 for about a month now. And I'm so delighted to find that it is one such phone. As I have been using this smartphone, I have discovered some very cool and nifty features or tips that can make the experience of using this device even better.
So here they are:
- Customized Power Saving Mode: The Power Saver app of ZenFone 2 has several power saving modes. Among them is a a mode called, well, Power Saving. It deactivates the network when the phone is sleeping. It is quite a handy mode to conserve battery. However, it might cause delay in the delivery of important mails and WhatsApp messages. The good thing is that you can use its functionality in the Customized Mode instead. Just choose the Customized mode and open its Menu. Turn on the Disabled when Asleep option. Next, switch the Extend stanby to On and select the apps whose notifications you want delivered in real time. These can include Gmail, email, WhatsApp etc. For example, I have Twitter and Facebook disabled but Gmail and WhatsApp delivers notifications in real time. That way, I get important notifications while still saving battery.
- Smart Switch: This is another useful feature of the Power Saver app. It can be accessed through the second tab on the app's home screen. It has two options. Using one, you can set the phone to automatically switch to the selected power saving mode when the battery goes below a certain level. The second option is to make the phone auto-switch to battery saving mode of choice based upon the time. Just select the mode and the start and end time.
- Auto Start Manager: Still on battery saving, the Auto-start Manager app can comes in very handy. Android devices lose too much battery because the apps keep on running at the background. Auto-start Manager allows users to choose what apps they want running and what they don't want to start automatically.
- Do It Later: This app is one of the highlights of ZenFone 2. And it can prove to be a very useful app. Users can add reminders on it. The best thing is that you can add reminders to it directly from the call log, missed call's page or from the message app. So if you need to respond to a missed call or a message but at a later time, just select Call Later from the call log or missed call's screen and Message's menu and it will directly be added to Do It later, along with the recipient's phone number.
- Keyboard: ASUS ZenFone allows several customization options like icon packs, themes etc. There are themes available even for the ZenUI Keyboard. However, if you don't like any of the options available, you can design your own Keyboard theme and use it or save for later. Just go to Language & Input -> ZenUi Keyboard ->Keyboard theme -> Default Tab and tap on the themes that have Edit written on them. Now design it as you like.
- Gallery Auto Brightness & Trash: Most phones now have auto-brightness to adjust the brightness based upon the light in the surrounding. Some users also keep the display brightness low to conserve battery. However, viewing photos or videos in dim display is not much fun. ASUS recently added a feature on ZenFone 2 that automatically maximizes the screen brightness as soon as the user enters gallery. This feature is called Smart Brightness and can be activated from Gallery's settings. Talking about Gallery, it has a Trash feature that stores all the deleted photos and videos. So any photo and video accidentally deleted can be recovered from the Trash. Trash option is present at the left side bar of the Gallery app. Once the trash is emptied, all its contents are deleted forever.
- App Manager Quick Accesss: The recent apps key of ASUS ZenFone 2 provides access to so much more than the recent apps. When you tap at the right key to open the recent apps list, it shows three buttons below the recent apps. The right most button clears the list. The left most button opens up the App Manager and you can view app details, uninstall or move apps to the memory card. So you don't have to go through the settings to manage your apps.
- Pin a screen: You can Pin a screen just by visiting the Recent Apps. But first, you need to activate the Screen Pinning from the Security settings. Once that's done, just open the recent apps list. You'll see a pin like button on the top right corner of every app in the list. Tap on that button and that screen gets pinned to the screen. Now, even if you press Home or Back key, it won't go away. To unpin the screen, tap the menu key and the recent apps key together.The screen will be unpinned.
- Inbuilt Unit Converter: The calculator app in ZenFone 2 has inbuilt unit converter. It can be easilly accessed from the menu of the calculator.
- Smart Group: The App folder of ZenFone 2 offers several customization options like scroll option, screen background opacity and grid size which can be adjusted from its Preferences. Selected apps can be hidden from it and apps can be sorted as per Frequent, Downloaded etc. But I like its Smart Group feature best. If you have many apps or have downloaded some new ones, just tap on Smart Group from the app folder's menu and all the apps will get neatly organized in smartly labeled folders. Another tip of the app folder - you can adjust its grid by just using the pinching gestures.
- Instant Camera: With customizable gesture commands on sleeping screen and app shortcuts on lockscreen, one can set up a gesture or lockscreen shortcut to instantly start the camera. But if you don't want to do that, you can also start the camera quickly while the phone is sleeping by double clicking the rear volume rocker. This shortcut can be activated from the Lock Screen section of the phone's Settings.
- Zen Circle & ZenTalk: If you have ZenFone, you might notice apps like Zen Talk and Zen Circle. You can use these to share your ZenFone photography and learn and share experience with other ZenFone users. Not just that, you can also use ZenTalk to give your feedback to ASUS.
These were some of cool features and shortcuts that I found on ZenFone 2. But I think many of these will be available in other ZenFones too. If you too have discovered any such cool feature or tip, do let me know!
Before you leave, here's a short video showcasing some of ZenFone 2's important features