Entire last year, Asus launched quite a few devices. In fact so many with so little difference, that at times, it was difficult to track each of them. However, there were some very decent performers and some not so very decent. While the Asus Zenfone 3 and Asus Zenfone 3 Max were impressive the Asus Zenfone 3s Max or Asus Zenfone 3 Ultra didn’t inspire much.
Fast forward to this year, Asus thought of moving a step ahead of the competition, who was busy launching selfie-centric smartphones, the Taiwanese company launched the Zenfone Live, keeping in mind the youth that is crazy to go live on social media platforms. The phone comes with a unique feature called “Live Beautification Mode”. How unique is that and what else is good or bad about the phone? let us check that out in our detailed Asus Zenfone Live Review.
Asus Zenfone Live Specifications
5-inch HD display (1280×720 pixels) | Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 quad-core processor | 2GB RAM | 16 GB internal (expandable up to 128GB) | 5 MP front camera | 13 MP rear camera | 2600 mAh battery | Android 6.0.1 | Rs. 9999
Asus Zenfone Live UnBox
Asus Zenfone Live – Unboxed
Inside the box, you get pretty regular stuff like
- Asus Zenfone Live Mobile phone itself
- A Power Adapter
- Data cable
- SIM eject tool
- Quick Start Guide
Asus Zenfone Live Review: Build, Design and Display
To start with a couple of things I liked about the Zenfone Live are the size and weight. The Asus Zenfone Live features a 5-inch display, comes with a very slim profile and is incredibly light, weighing at 120-grams in all helping the purpose of one-handed live streaming, USP of the Zenfone Live. Apart from being light, rounded edges and sides help in a decent grip. The ZenFone Live comes in three colors Rose Pink, Black, and Gold.
The Asus Zenfone Live comes with a 5-inch HD, display with a 2.5D curved glass on top. You can find the selfie flash, earpiece, camera and regular sensors on the top of the display while the capacitive buttons are located at the bottom of the display. These buttons are non-backlit and take some time getting used to using the phone in dark. Strange choice by Asus.
The volume rocker and the power button are located on the right. The buttons are made of metal and are sturdy. They come with a concentric texture on them. On the right, you have the hybrid SIM tray slot that can house two Nano SIM cards or one Nano SIM along with a microSD card, max capacity 128 GB.
On the bottom part, the Asus Zenfone Live has bottom firing speakers, Micro-USB charging slot, and a microphone. While a 3.5mm audio jack and a secondary mic are located on the top. A rear camera is placed on top-corner of the phone with Asus logo on the back. You can see two prominent antenna lines on the top and bottom of the Asus Zenfone Live.
While Asus has kept design is quite simple, it is disappointing to see the lack of Full-HD display, fingerprint sensor, and an IR blaster. Quite a norm these days. While I understand using metal in place of plastic would’ve made the Zenfone Live a bit heavier however plastic build isn’t durable and the phone lacks premium looks.
Asus Zenfone Live Review: Software, Performance, and Battery
The Asus Zenfone Live comes with an Android 6.0 Marshmallow with Zen UI running on top. While, the look and feel of the icons and settings are a personal choice, Asus has ensured that the UI is kept light whasdaich is important considering that the phone has a mediocre processor.
The Zenfone Live is yet another Asus phone that comes loaded tons of bloatware and only few of them are usable. Sadly, you cant remove them as well. Wish the UI of the phone was as light as the phone it self.
With a Snapdragon 400 SOC powering the Asus Zenfone Live, you can only expect average performance. While regular tasks like social media apps, browsing, were not an issue, but gaming is a strcitly no no for the phone. The phone will definitely get further slower with time and choice of putting less RAM and internal storage will make matters worse. I do not trust benchmark score however did run the regular benchmark apps and the scores werent impressive either.
The battery on the Zenfone Live should give you around a day’s backup at max. Asus has put in quite a few number of battery modes that help to get maximum juice out of the phone.
Asus Zenfone Live Review: Camera
The Asus Zenfone Lives comes with a 5 megaixel front camera with a flash. Seems like a regular stuff these days, however the usage and implementation is different from the competition here. A 13 megapixel rear camera is present on the back.
In regular daylight conditions, the camera was able to focus easily however it did struggle with low light. The camera did struggle with macro shots and took longer time to focus. I found the camera UI to be simple neat and has all the necessary option present already. Various modes like Auto, HDR Pro, Beautification, Super Resolution, Children, Low Light, QR Code, Night, Effect, Selfie, Panorama, and Time Lapse are present in the camera app. Hence you may not need to download third-party apps should you need these features.
Talking about the front camera it clcomes with te beautification mode that helps beautifying your snaps. The flash present on the phone does what it is supposed to and comes handy during low light shots.
Coming to the BeautyLive app, Asus Zenfone Live’s USP, it helps in removing blemishing real time resulting better live videos on social media apps like Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. You can set up the strength of filter to be applied from within the app. You need to go live with Facebook, the app is superimposed on the settings and you can control the live video.
Overall apart from making you look super smooth, sadly, the app cant do much. While the BeautyLive app works on the rear camera as well, since video doesn’t directly go live from this app, it does not let you store a video on SD card which is disappointing as you cant edit the video since they look a bit oversaturated.
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