ASUS ZenFone Selfie review - How to take a better look at yourself?

Whenever you think of ASUS, the first thing that comes into your mind might not be their line of smartphones. Although the Taiwanese electronics company is mostly known for their notebooks and computer hardware, they manufacture smartphones and tablets as well. We managed to get our hands on one of their latest mid-range smartphones, the ASUS ZenFone Selfie, an Android device created mostly for teens and the selfie-generation. Let's see how good a job ASUS did with this smartphone, in this review:

Hardware specifications and packaging

The smartphone comes in mostly standardized ASUS packaging: it is a white cardboard box, featuring the manufacturer's name, the smartphone's branding and some of its most important features printed on its side.

The box slides open to reveal its most important contents: the smartphone itself. On a more personal note, I was a bit surprised upon opening the box, as I ha d not read anything about this smartphone before and, based on its name, I expected a much smaller device. It was a pleasant surprise to see a rather elegantly designed smartphone, with sleek curves and a rather large screen - it seems that buyers of mid-range devices are getting their share of quality as well, which is a welcome fact.

The ZenFone Selfie is available in Leather Black, Pure White, Chic Pink, Aqua Blue, Glacier Gray and Sheer Gold color variants - this is more than enough. We are sure that anyone can find a color he or she likes, whether they want a more playful, colorful variant or an elegant style is preferred. We had a Glacier Gray device for testing, which should appeal to almost everyone, as it is a more low-key color.

Under the smartphone and a cardboard lid, one can find the user's manual, a warranty slip, the charger head, a microUSB cable and a pair of wired headphones as well. The addition of the headsets is a very nice bonus, mostly because it's not very frequently seen along mid-range devices. And we're talking about in-ear ones with a set of additional earplugs as well - thanks for the bonus!

Regarding the smartphone's specifications, the ASUS ZenFone Selfie (also known by its model number, ZD551KL) has a huge, 5.5" IPS capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels and a pixel density of 403 ppi, all this protected with a Corning Gorilla Glass 4 oleophobic coating. This size makes the ZenFone Selfie more of a phablet than just a smartphone - if you have big hands, that's surely an advantage, when dealing with this baby.

The smartphone is 156.5 mm (6.16 in) tall, 77.2 mm (3.04 in) wide, has a thickness of 10.8 mm (0.43 in) and weighs 170 grams (6.00 oz).

Under the hood there is an octa-core Snapdragon 615 (MSM8939) chipset with two quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU's, each ticking at 1.7 GHz. This processing power is further enhanced by an Adreno 405 GPU with DirectX 11.2, OpenCL 1.2 and OpenGL ES 3.0 support. As for RAM, you can get 2 or 3 Gigabytes, depending on the exact model (we had one with 3 GB of memory), while the storage space can be 16 or 32 GB. Our test device has 32GB of storage space, with 24.88 GB being free for user data and additional applications. If that's not enough, the ZenFone Selfie has microSD support and you can install a memory card with a maximum of size of 128 GB.

The device also has two micro-SIM slots, working in dual standby mode, meaning that while you're talking on one SIM card, the other one is in standby, not able to receive calls. Both SIM slots support 3G and 4G networks as well, although only one can connect to these high-speed networks at a time. Still, it is especially good that both slots are 4G-compliant if you want to use a microSD card, as this needs to be inserted in the first SIM slot.

The smartphone's battery is a 3000 mAh Li-Polymer model, which is replaceable - this is something very rare with high-end smartphones and is hugely welcome here, as this way one can always have a backup battery, if need be.

Both the front and rear camera on the ZenFone Selfie have 5-prism Largan lenses, a resolution of 13 MP, Toshiba sensors, blue glass filters, and dual-tone LED flashes, the only difference being their aperture size: the rear camera has an f/2.0 aperture, while the front camera's aperture size is f/2.2 and also has an 88-degree wide-angle field of view.

As for connectivity, the smartphone supports 2G (EDGE/GPRS/GSM), 3G WCDMA (850MHz/900MHz/1900MHz/2100MHz) and 4G LTE networks, the theoretical maximum speeds being 5.76 Mbps for upload and 42 Mbps for download on HSPA+ and 50 Mbps for upload and 150 Mbps for download on LTE networks. The smartphone also has 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFi support and can connect to both 2.4 GHz and 5GHz wireless networks. Besides a 4.0 Bluetooth module (with A2DP and EDR), the ZenFone Selfie has GPS, A-GPS and GLONASS support, an NFC chip, and a microUSB 2.0 port as well. Another feature that is disappearing from most smartphones nowadays is the FM radio - the Selfie has it and it works if you plug a headphone in the 3.5 mm jack port.

The full set of hardware specifications can be found here: ZenFone Selfie (ZD551KL) specifications.

The ASUS ZenFone Selfie's technical specifications reveal a solid mid-range device with some noteworthy bonuses that are not that frequently seen in this price category. Also, the small extras like the replaceable battery or the in-ear headphones make the smartphone an even better choice in the mid-range area.

Design and build quality

The ZenFone Selfie inherits most of its main design features from the ZenFone line of smartphones: this means an elegant and stylish look, with a rather minimalistic design pattern. The most obvious feature is of course the very large, 5.5" screen, which takes up most of the smartphone's front: this has a small frame, so there aren't many unused areas here.

Right above the screen is the 13 MP front camera, the signature feature of the ZenFone Selfie. This is of course unusually large for a front camera, which suggests a higher than usual image quality. The camera is supplemented by a dual-tone flash, and besides these we can also see the front speaker.

On the bottom of the front part, just below the screen, the smartphone has the default Android softkeys: the Back, Home and Recent Apps keys. We were very sorry to see that these don't have any backlight, which makes them much harder to use in low-light areas. Below the touch keys there is a brushed metallic finish, which is a nice addition to the design, and, just like in the case of the ZenFone 2 Laser , we would really like to see this finish on more parts.

The top edge of the device houses the power key - it is common to place it here, but due to the ZenFone Selfie being a rather large device, it might have been wiser to put the power key on one of the sides, as it can be a bit hard to reach it when using the smartphone in one hand. We can also see the 3.5 mm jack connector and a microphone near the key.

On the bottom of the device there is another microphone, accompanied by the microUSB 2.0 port that is used for connecting the Selfie to a computer and also for charging. The two sides are completely empty, although there is a small notch on the right, which you can use to take off the back panel.

While we're at the back panel: there is a prominent ASUS logo printed right on its middle, while the word Zenfone is on the bottom, just above the rather large back speaker. It's interesting to note that the brand name is spelled Zenfone on the device and the packaging, while it's written as ZenFone , with a capital F on the ASUS website.

The most important features of the back panel are in the topmost area, where we can see the 13MP rear camera, the dual-tone LED flash and the laser autofocus sensor. Below these we can see the volume keys, which are quite ergonomically placed and are easy to reach, but hard to press accidentally. Also, the rear camera is really close to them, you will surely be touching it a lot - keep a cleaning cloth at hand.

As for the smartphone's general build quality we need to praise the main screen: the Gorilla Glass 4 is great for keeping away scratches, and - surprisingly - the touchscreen is no fingerprint-magnet either. The IPS panel has decent contrast, very nice colors and a good viewing angle too.

The back panel has a curved design, which we really liked, as it sets it apart from many other, really flat smartphones, even though it makes the device a bit more bulky. The panel is made of medium quality plastic, has a matte finish and it looks a bit fragile, so we don't recommend taking it off, unless necessary. Aside from that, the device is rather well assembled, we couldn't really hear any squeaks or creaks while handling it.

The ASUS ZenFone Selfie has a good-looking and fairly unique design, specific of the ZenFone line. The materials used in the smartphone range from really good ones on the front to medium quality plastics on the back, but the overall impression is rather good, thanks to the device being properly assembled.

The smartphone experience on the ASUS ZenFone Selfie

When taking a mid-range smartphone into our hands, we usually tend to have some lowered expectations: mediocre screen quality, a bit slow or somewhat outdated software, lags here and there, not a very good camera and so on. Fortunately, the ASUS ZenFone Selfie fares much better in almost all areas of use.

First of all, let's see the display: the colors are very nice, not overly saturated like on many other manufacturers' devices, but more natural in a way. We might even say that the image quality is perfect: the high resolution and pixel ratio make the screen very good to look at, you might get the feeling that you're using a much higher priced smartphone.

As for speed, we really don't have very much to complain about. The Selfie had no problems in our day-to-day tasks, it wasn't sluggish at all: web browsing and apps were all performing well and we didn't experience major slowdowns. Sometimes, when browsing more complex websites, there was a noticeable, but not annoying lag during scrolling. Also, installing and updating apps took an unusually long time - this was quite strange, compared to the otherwise okay speed. There were no major stability issues, although the device once turned off unexpectedly - we don't know the reason for this, as it never happened again.

During calls the sound quality was good, but it was missing that certain crystal clear sound feeling you might expect when talking on 3G and 4G networks. This is more of a note than a complaint, as we always heard the other party perfectly, there were no volume problems and we were also heard well by others.

Connection to 2G and 3G networks worked flawlessly, but there were some places where the ZenFone Selfie didn't switch to 4G, although other devices did. When using it outside at even better 4G coverage, the smartphone had no problems connecting to the 4G network. It's good to know that both SIM slots support 4G LTE networks, so if you plan on using the first slot for a microSD card, you won't have to give up on using 4G.

An interesting bonus the smartphone offers is the ability to record calls. Although we have previously seen apps do that by putting all calls on the loudspeaker, the ZenFone Selfie actually records both talking parties without using the loudspeakers. This feature is probably very useful to journalists when making phone interviews, but it can be really handy for others too. However, keep in mind that in some countries you are obliged to notify the other party prior to recording a call.

We tried using navigation too, and the GPS module worked flawlessly: it connected rapidly, even when used indoors, and never lost connection. This, along with the really large screen, makes the ZenFone Selfie a good navigation companion.

Being a kind of multimedia-centered smartphone, one might expect awesome sound quality too: the built-in speakers are loud enough, but of course the plastic casing doesn't really allow for any spectacular parties. Still, the bundled earphones are of a rather good quality: if you want to listen to music, you should stick to them, or use your own pair of headphones.

Based on the smartphone's specifications, we should expect about 23 hours of talk time or 255 hours of standby time with one full charge from the 3000 mAh Li-Po battery. We have been using the Selfie as our only smartphone during the test period, and just the way we use our own: with automatic brightness, always-on WiFi, Bluetooth turned off, location set to battery saving mode, an average number of phone calls, SMS messages and emails, and a bit of browsing as well. With this usage we managed to finish a day with about 30-35 percent of battery life left in the Selfie: this means that we could have easily started the next day without charging the battery again, but it wouldn't have lasted two days. This is mostly due to the 5.5" screen, and I think we can say that this is a really acceptable battery life: even if you live and breathe with your smartphone, it will still keep going for a day. You can also get it to work for two days, if used sparingly.

Both its main features, the battery life and its communication capabilities make the ASUS ZenFone Selfie a mid-range smartphone, which has its ups and downs, but it surely is a strong contender in this price category. Also it has a much more elegant design than most mid-range smartphones.

The camera experience on the ASUS ZenFone Selfie

Well, talk about preconceptions with such a name… Being called the ZenFone Selfie, you will undoubtedly expect this smartphone to be the dream of all teenagers over the world. And ASUS tries to make this dream come true by placing a 13 megapixel camera on both the rear and front panels. This is just the beginning, wait until you see the special modes prepared for the selfies!

But first for the main camera on the back: the 13 megapixel unit comes with a dual-tone LED flash, a Toshiba sensor, laser focusing and anti-shake, the images having a maximum resolution of 4096 x 2304 pixels. Despite the great-sounding specifications, we weren't overly impressed with the camera. It definitely takes good pictures, but viewing them at their original size, one can observe quite a lot of image noise and chromatic aberration. To top it off, pictures taken in low lighting conditions, are of even poorer quality, sometimes nearly unusable. The anti-shake feature comes in handy, but we have seen much better applications: even if it's turned on, you need to keep your hand very steady to avoid blurring.

Of course the pictures will probably never be used at their original size, and when uploaded to Facebook, or viewed on the device's screen, they look really nice, and we must acknowledge that the colours are sometimes just beautiful. There are also tons of special camera modes for those who like to experiment. Besides a handful of special effects, one can take HDR pictures, make GIF animations, automatically remove moving objects from pictures, create tilt & shift (miniature-like) images or panoramas.

Most of these work really great and offer quite a good amount of fun, even in the long run. Unfortunately the Depth of Field mode looks artificially blurred, but the rest of the special effects are really nice. Have a look at them in the gallery below!

 

The front-facing selfie camera is almost the same as the one on the back, it only lacks laser focus and has a different aperture size and view angle. Compared to other front-facing cameras, this one is much, much better. If you like taking selfies, we can honestly say that this is one of the best available choices.

Oh, and for the special modes, we have mentioned… Yes, beautification. There are a couple of effects available that can make your eyes look bigger (guess who is this made for), your face blush, or your wrinkles and each and every one of your facial features disappear. Seriously, one of the selfie effects makes you look like someone who just poured a metric ton of makeup on his face. Have fun!

The ZenFone Selfie can record 1080p videos at a standard 30 fps and has stereo microphones. It does quite a good job and here is an example to look at.

You can also record slow-motion videos, but this feature didn't really work: instead of recording in slow-motion, the smartphone recorded a very stuttering video, that lagged a lot. This might be a software bug we hope to see fixed in an upcoming firmware.

The ASUS ZenFone Selfie is great at being a selfie-phone: the front-facing camera is one of the best ones available, so all selfie-fans will consider this smartphone as a great companion. The main camera is not that good at being the main camera, but it can still take some decent photos, and there are a number of special effects available to make them look cooler.

Android 5.0 Lollipop, ASUS Zen UI & Bundled apps

The smartphone comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop preinstalled - there is currently no official news on a possible 5.1 update, although the ZenFone 2 is slated to get it sooner or later, so we can only hope that the Selfie will receive it too. ASUS implemented its own custom UI, the Zen UI on the ZenFone Selfie, which is a really easy to use interface, being relatively similar to the stock Android experience.

ASUS made some welcome additions, like a slightly reworked quick settings menu and lock screen. The colors and the default theme are very pleasant-looking and most users will probably not want to change it for a while. The Zen UI supports gestures as well, so if you like to control your smartphone this way, you can set them up to help you. The lock screen is also noteworthy, as you can place your most important apps there, so they will be instantly accessible. You don't even have to unlock the screen first.

On the downside though, there are many bundled apps. Just like many other manufacturers, ASUS managed to load up the ZenFone Selfie with tons of preinstalled apps. Some of these can be quite handy, like the Do It Later, but if you don't like them, there's really not much to do, as nothing can be uninstalled, only disabled. We're talking about 20+ apps, some redundant, since there are two note-taking apps, three browsers, and some could have been compiled into one app, instead of splitting them (like the ASUS profile app, forum access, and other associated services).

Let's see what apps does the Selfie ship with:

• ASUS Mobile Manager - a control panel where you can set power saving settings, clean unused memory and access various settings.
• ASUS Support - access FAQs, a message board and assistance.
• AudioWizard - sound effects control panel with presets.
• Auto-start Manager - manage auto-start permissions for apps.
• Backup - backup software for ASUS apps.
• Clean Master - a memory cleaning and "booster" tool, usually considered bloatware.
• Data Transfer - used for transferring data from your old phone via Bluetooth.
• Do It Later - to-do list that can receive to-do items from all kinds of apps, a really useful and handy tool.
• Dr. Safety - malware and virus protection, it didn't work on the test device, but turned on the flashlight for some reason and we couldn't turn it off, only by restarting the device.
• File Manager - quite self-explanatory, it manages all your files on the device.
• Kids Mode - in kids mode, you can limit access to only a certain set of apps, and set a passcode for exiting this mode.
• Laser Ruler - uses the camera's laser focusing mechanism for measuring distances.
• MiniMovie - create short movie clips from your photos.
• Music - the default music player application from ASUS.
• MyASUS - access online ASUS store, support and your personal ASUS profile.
• Omlet Chat - a chat app from ASUS.
• PC Link - connect your smartphone to your computer so you can access it from there.
• PhotoCollage - create all kinds of collages from your pictures with different effects.
• Power Saver - access power saving options.
• Quick Memo - simple note-taking app.
• Remote Link - turn your smartphone into a remote control, and wirelessly control your computer.
• Share Link - simple file-sharing between your smartphone and another Android device or PC.
• Splendid - configure color settings for the smartphone's screen.
• SuperNote - a more advanced note-taking app with handwriting.
• Themes - ASUS offers a wide range of themes for the ZenFone Selfie, you can get them here.
• WebStorage - the smartphone comes with 5 GB free lifetime ASUS WebStorage, you can access that here.
• What's Next - overview of upcoming tasks, events, weather forecasts, etc.
• ZenCircle - ASUS's social network, based on sharing content captured with your smartphone.
• ZenTalk - a forum dedicated to ZenFone users from all around the world.
• Zinio - newsstand application where you can purchase and read all your favorite newspapers and magazines.

Besides these, the ZenFone Selfie also has all the major Google apps installed, so you don't have to worry about getting them.

The default Android user interface and the user experience provided is really good, and fortunately, ASUS managed to improve upon it. The small, but great additions are noteworthy, although the long list of pre-installed and unremovable apps can be a problem if you don't want to root your smartphone.

Performance in benchmarks

Being a mid-range smartphone, the ASUS ZenFone Selfie works even better than expected in everyday situations. Although we did not install many apps besides the ones already on the smartphone, we were very curious how the device fares in a series of benchmark applications. We first tested the CPU using Vellamo. Having a multi-core CPU, the first test we ran on the Selfie was Vellamo's Multicore test, which benchmarks the processor's multithreaded capabilities. Here the Selfie scored 1571 points, which is really good for a mid-range smartphone: it surpassed the ZenFone 2 and even the Nexus 5, falling just about 100 points short of the Nexus 6.

Unfortunately, not all applications make use of a multi-core CPU, and can use only a single processor core, so we naturally tested the single-core performance as well. For this we used the Vellamo Metal test, where the ZenFone Selfie got only 909 points - this is surprising only because it fared much better in the multi-core test than the ZenFone 2 Laser (ZE500KL), and here it only managed to surpass it by a mere 7 points and received more than 250 points less than the Nexus 5, which it also outperformed in the multi-core test.

Still, this doesn't mean that the Selfie is slow: its usual performance is good enough to work seamlessly and without lags, so you shouldn't worry about the lower single-core score. And don't forget that more and more apps support multi-core CPUs.

Of course, the processor is not the only component in your smartphone that counts. If you want to watch movies or play games, a good GPU is also required. We used the GFXBench GL Benchmark to test the smartphone's graphical capabilities. This benchmarking app has a long list of tests, but let's see how did the Selfie fare on the T-Rex and Manhattan 1080p tests.

On the T-Rex Offscreen test, the ZenFone Selfie rendered 751.4 frames, that is 13 fps. That's not a very good performance, as the Selfie is somewhere on the bottom of the comparison list when it comes to rendering 3D content in 1080p.

The Manhattan Offscreen test is even more demanding so, naturally, the device had a low score of 330 frames, or 5.3 fps. These two results show that the ASUS ZenFone Selfie might not be the best choice for high-resolution gaming.

Gaming might not be the main activity on your smartphone, but you will surely want to use a web browser quite often, so this kind of performance could be really important. Fortunately, we have Vellamo and its Explore test at hand again. This test does not only try to render all kinds of content (HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) in a web browser, but it also measures zooming and scrolling performance - tasks you do all the time when you browse the web. Using Google's Chrome browser, the ZenFone Selfie received a score of 2112 points, which places it in the middle of the list. This underlines our browsing experience which was quite good, and we only experienced some minor screen tearing and lags when quickly navigating complex websites.

It's also interesting to note that Chrome was the fastest browser of the three tested. Selfie also has the default Android browser pre-installed, and we also tried Firefox just to see how it fared. They weren't much slower in the tests, but Chrome had a decisive victory. The ZenFone Selfie also has the Puffin browser installed, but Vellamo didn't recognize it and we also had some serious lags when using it, so we excluded it from our tests.

Battery life is a constant problem with smartphones that keep getting bigger and bigger screens, while the batteries just can't keep the pace. Based on our own experience, the 3000 mAh Li-Po battery in the ZenFone Selfie can easily keep the device running for a day and a half with moderate usage, but PCMark ' s Work battery life test had an even better result, as it measured a battery life of 7 hours and 21 minutes under constant load, claiming that the Selfie is one of the most powerful devices in terms of battery life. We have seen devices fare better than this on a daily use, but we have to admit that the Selfie has a decent battery - and remember that it's replaceable!

Being a smartphone that supports 4G LTE networks, we were curious what download and upload speeds we can get, so we downloaded Ookla's Speedtest application to test mobile data transfer speeds. We were using the Orange Romania network and tried the test both indoors and outdoors.

The ZenFone Selfie had some issues with using the 4G network indoors, but we can't complain about the speed when connected to LTE: the best results we had were a download speed of 47.22 Mbps and an upload speed of 14.94 Mbps, all with a really low ping time of 17 ms. That should be enough for all your data transfer needs.

Although synthetic benchmarks can be sometimes misleading, we still think that their results should be taken into consideration, as they can show how a device fares in different situations. All the benchmarks we ran on the ZenFone Selfie show that it is a solid mid-range device that works at a decent speed and probably no user will live through any frustrating moments when the smartphone can't handle what they want to do.

Verdict

The ASUS ZenFone Selfie (ZD551KL) is, by all means, a very good mid-range smartphone. With a huge 5.5" IPS panel touchscreen that has Gorilla Glass 4 protection and great pixel density, it will surely satisfy even the highest demands when it comes to screen quality. Add the fact that it comes in many colors for all kinds of people, has all the latest communication technologies from fast wireless networking to LTE and some highly missed features like a replaceable battery and an FM radio, and you get something even more than a mid-range smartphone: a device that gives its user a glimpse of what high-end Android smartphones can offer, along with a very friendly price-tag and some features that not many flagship smartphones offer. Although its main camera is a bit of a disappointment, the front -facing 13 MP lens will be the favorite of all selfie-lovers, reassuring anyone that the smartphone is aptly named. Its features, capabilities, design, and price make the ASUS ZenFone Selfie one of the best mid-range Android smartphones currently available on the market.