People are now moving to more interactive content. They are not just sharing text status but also sharing videos. Facebook and Instagram even allow them to go live and share a Live video with friends and followers. So, Asus has designed a phone for Live content. Asus Zenfone Live is designed for offering good live streaming and promises that you will look better with its video beauty technology.
Not just beauty technology, there is more things to talk on the phone. I tested the phone for few days and here is my review of Zenfone Live
ASUS Zenfone Live Review
Design
This phone has small form factor with a 5-inch display. So, the phone is handy. It looks to have unibody construction, but the back has mostly polycarbonate. with metallic color finish. The overall feel was the same as we got in the other Zenfone 3 series of phones.
Above the display, it has front LED flash and below the display it has three capacitive non-backlit keys. At the right side, it has volume rocker and power button. At the left side, it has hybrid sim card slot. Top edge has 3.5mm audio port and the base edge has micro USB port and speaker. At the back, it has a primary camera with LED flash and shiny ASUS logo coated in chrome.
Even if the phone falls in the budget segment, it looks premium.
Display
Zenfone Live comes with 5-inch IPS LCD panel with HD resolution and 2.5D curved glass. It offers 294 PPI pixel density. It offers a decent experience. The display is bright and offers good color reproduction. It performs well in indoor and outdoor. Watching videos and playing games on this display offers pleasant experience.
Software UI
Zenfone Live runs on ZenUI 3.0 based on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. This time the company tried to add less number of bloatware. This UI comes with lots of nice features and options to customize the phone in many ways.
Asus already launched its previous phone with Nougat, I am not sure why this phone didn’t get the update.
There is also a BeautyLive app. This is the soul of the phone. It allows you to apply and adjust the beautification when you are live streaming. The video and audio both were good on live video. The Beautylive app allows you to control your skin smoothness and look better in real time. So, you can share the better version of yourself in Live videos. The app supports Facebook and YouTube. So, you can go live on these platforms and look better.
Multimedia
Even if the phone just HD display, it does a decent job. It has 5-magnet speaker with smart amplifier and I think it does pretty good job. Output in earphones is also good due to DTS Headphone:X. The phone also has two noise canceling microphones and stereo recording for a clear audio capture.
Performance and Storage
The phone comes with Snapdragon 400 quad-core CPU clocked at 1.2GHz. It has 2GB RAM. The phone performs well and handles most of the apps smoothly. It does most of the things that you expect from a budget device, but I felt lag sometimes. It was mostly during switching from one app to another when multiple heavy apps running in the background or I received multiple apps notifications.
I am surprised with the choice of chipset selection. They could use Snapdragon 430 and 425 CPUs that offer more performance at the same price point. We also have 3GB RAM pretty common at this price. So, it could be another disappointment for many. Here it should be noted that phone is not for heavy performance, but just for live streaming your beautified version.
It has Adreno 306 GPU to handle graphics. I tested the phone with many games and found it is a fine device for casual gaming. You will enjoy low-end games and few high-end games, but performance will not optimal with heavy games.
The ASUS Zenfone Live phone has 16GB of storage that offers around 10 GB to use. You can expand storage up to 128GB. It also offers 200GB for two years on Google Drive for free.
Camera
The camera of ASUS Zenfone Live is the primary feature of the phone because the phone is for video broadcasting. But we should also not forget that the phone falls in the budget segment. It has 13-megapixel rear autofocus camera with a f/2.0 aperture, LED flash and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera with front flash.The default camera app is packed with all powerful camera options including PixelMaster modes.
The default camera app is packed with all powerful camera options including PixelMaster modes. You also have beauty mode to capture attractive selfies.
The rear camera captures nice photos with good color accuracy with decent detail. Photos were well balanced in good light. In low-light, the photos didn’t have accurate colors but low-light mode still does a good job. Considering the price, this camera is doing an excellent job.
The front camera also takes decent selfies as long as you are capturing in good light. The selfies come out grainy in low-light, but the front LED flash does a decent job in capturing good photos.
It can record 1080p videos at 30fps .Software stabilization only works at 720p and below.
Connectivity and Battery
The ASUS Zenfone Live phone has two microphones for capturing good audio for live streaming. That even works while you are on the call. So, your voice will be clear over the network while talking to other people.
It has 4G LTE connectivity with VoLTE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 and GPS connectivity options. I didn’t face any issue with the connectivity options in the phone
The phone has just 2650 mAh battery that looks smaller but it performs better. Getting a full day usage is easy, but this depends on the kind of usage you have. It takes around 2 hours 30 minutes in charging from 0 to 100%.
Final Words
Asus Zenfone Live is actually designed to give a good experience with video content. The camera is good and its noise canceling microphone system works great. If you usually go Live on different social networking platform or share your selfie videos, you can try this phone. For the price of Rs. 9,999, this phone is actually a good deal.
This phone has a decent camera, good display, and nice battery backup but compromises with few things. The company dropped metal unibody design and even used a very old chipset. I do not see polycarbonate chassis a disadvantage but choice of processor was not good at all.
So, this phone is all about the camera and its live beautification technology. So, you can now go live without thinking much about how would you look like our how would you sound. Yes, Internet connection should be good apart from having Zenfone Live to go Live.
