How the Asus Zenfone 3 Zoom Bucks Trend of Ho Hum Smartphone Upgrades

The Asus Zenfone 3 Zoom’s dual-lens rear camera, long battery life and generous storage capacity help it break the trend of unimpressive smartphone upgrades.

The Asus Zenfone 3 Zoom ships with a 5.5-inch display featuring full HD resolution. The screen supports up to 10 simultaneous touchpoints and has a blue light filter to protect user eyes. It also features Corning’s Gorilla Glass 5 to protect against falls and a fingerprint- and smudge-resistant coating for better visual quality.

The Zenfone 3 Zoom has a massive 5,000mAh battery that can last up to two days of continuous talk time. When the phone is in standby mode, its battery can hold out for 42 days before it needs to be recharged.

Fast-charging has become a critical feature in the smartphone market, and Asus was quick to note that not only does its smartphone support it, but it’s using cutting-edge charging technology. The Zenfone 3 Zoom comes with a USB-C port that allows it to add two hours of charge time in just five minutes. Perhaps best of all, the Zenfone 3 Zoom comes with a power bank feature that lets users connect the Zenfone 3 Zoom to other devices and charge those, as well.

The Zenfone 3 Zoom won’t blow anyone away with its power, but it should work for most. It runs on a 2GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 chip and has up to 4GB of RAM. On the video side, users will find the Adreno 506 GPU. Together, the Snapdragon and Adreno should work just fine with most apps. Sophisticated apps, however, might have trouble on this device.

Although the Zenfone 3 Zoom is a midrange device, it comes with a surprising amount of storage. Customers will be able to choose up to 128GB with the Zenfone 3 Zoom, which can accommodate an additional 2TB of storage on a microSD card. Owners also can get up to 100GB of free space in Google Drive for two years after purchase.

The Zenfone 3 Zoom is running on Google’s Android Marshmallow—a somewhat surprising move, considering new, higher-end Android devices are now shipping with its successor, Android Nougat. Asus has once again bundled its ZenUI user interface atop Marshmallow to customize its look and feel. The device also ships with several Asus-designed apps, including its ZenFit health app, a to-do list and Mobile Manager, which keeps users abreast of how their handsets are performing.

The Asus Zenfone 3 Zoom comes with a 5-magnet speaker and SonicMaster and High-Res Audio certifications. All of that translates to outstanding audio quality to deliver superior sound quality during phone calls. The feature also could help those who prefer speakerphone calls to get a bit more quality from the handset.

The Zenfone 3 Zoom has a dual, 12-megapixel camera on the rear with high-light sensitivity and 12x zoom. According to Asus, the camera performs exceedingly well in low-light conditions and can focus a picture in just 0.03 seconds. On the front, users will find a 13-megapixel selfie-friendly camera that similarly can perform well in low-light conditions.

Those who travel often might find some value in the Zenfone 3 Zoom’s dual-SIM support. The feature provides the ability to have two SIM cards in the device to use it in most places around the world. The second SIM tray is also where the microSD card is housed, however, so the storage card cannot be plugged into the device when two SIMs are in it.

Asus has kept its pricing and availability information on the Zenfone 3 largely close to the vest. For now, the company is saying only that the handset will be available to customers in February and that the handset will cost less than $400 unlocked. It’ll be available in the United States, China and many other markets around the world.