New Delhi: Asus has pulled a rabbit out of a hat by aggressively pricing their new ZenFone smartphones in the fiercely competitive Indian smartphone market.
The company introduced three phones in India - ZenFone 4, 5, and 6. While we have already posted our review of the ZenFone 5 - which comes at Rs 9,999 - here is our first impressions review of the Rs 5,999 ZenFone 4 smartphone. This hands-on review is based on a brief period that we got to spend with the device at the demo zone during the launch event.
Asus' ZenFone 4 is the cheapest of all the three smartphones that made their way to India today. The phone looks similar to the ZenFone 5, but comes in a smaller chassis. At 4-inches, the ZenFone 4 is easy to hold and operate with a single hand, which I found not-so-comfortable with the ZenFone 5.
The low-cost ZenFone 4 looks beautiful and has the same concentric circle finsh at the lower-end of the front panel as it's on the ZenFone 5 and 6. The phone comes in five colours - Characol Black, Pearl White, Cherry Red, Sky Bue, and Solar Yellow, and a metal-coloured matte finish at the back adds to its looks.
Given its price, the phone has a great display with good colour reproduction and satisfactory viewing angles. The touchscreen on phones in this price range udually requires relatively more effors to navigate, but it's not the case with the ZenFone 4. It was smooth to navigate and make swipes on the phone.
The phone's rear camera generated good results, at least, in soft-light conditions - that was what the lighting condition was at the demo zone. Therefore, I assume it to perfom good in bright light too, but it would be too early to comment about its performance in low-light environments. Although, the phone has a special mode for low-light situations, which we found impressive in the ZenFone 5, but we can't assume to perform the same way in the ZenFone 4.
Its front camera is not good - neither for selfies nor for even video calls. It may perform better in bright light, but your chances of doing a video call outdoors is very less.
Quite like the ZenFone 5, the 4-inch ZenFone has two SIM slots and a microSD card slot for additional storage. The phone has an internal storage space of 8GB, of which around 4.5GB is user-accessible. The speakers on the phone produce sound that is easily audible, but is not loud. However, with earphones plugged in, the results could be better.
The phone comes running Android 4.3 (with a guaranteed aupdate to Andorid 4.4) with ZenUI atop. The ZenFone 4's user interface is both neat and intuitive. We have already talked in detail about the phone's user interface in our ZenFone 5 review. To know more about ZenUI, click here.
The phone has a 1.2GHz Intel Atom processor with 1GB of RAM. We would not be able to comment on how fast the phone is and how well it processes tasks. This can only be told only after using the phone for a longer period.
The ZenFone 4 looks a tough contendor to the likes of Samsung, Motorola and other homegrown manufacturers, but its real potential can be ascretained after putting it to real-life tests. We will soon issue a final verdict on the phone.
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