Alright, So Asus has launched yet another phone for a specific niche, this time it’s for all those people who like to go live on social media platforms. I was not very sure about what Asus wanted from their phone, it has been more than 2 months since launch, and I wonder about the sales figure of the phone. Well, t is my duty to test the phone thoroughly so I made the phone as my primary device for 1 week and It wasn’t so pleasing. Let me tell you about it.
Design
Just like any other budget phone from Asus, Zenfone live has a metallic build with the camera on the top left. It looks good and seems a well expensive phone. It’s fairly light and very compact as well. THe unit I got has white front and gold back. THe phone feels well finished.
Performance
It comes with a Snapdragon 410 processor and 2GB of RAM. The price to performance ratio is low and they could have used a much better processor from the lines of Snapdragon 65X. You can play basic games on it and is fairly cable of doing day to day tasks. But, here is the thing, I have used Asus phone is past and they tend to slow down after a couple of months. So don’t expect some mind boggling value from this phone.
Camera
Now being a phone to be live, you would expect a great sensor but sadly no, Asus is trying to improve their camera quality by software but they actually should focus on the hardware first. The images have way too high contrast and are over saturated. Same goes for the selfie camera as well. For the selfie cam, you get an additional flash which well is useful when going live.
Going Live!
Asus is marketing this phone as a go to phone for all those who love to go live. They claim that the app inside the phone can do live beautification of your face so that you look good while live but I doubt how many people would use beautification mode when live. It isn’t as polished as you would want to and say you go out of the frame and when you come back, they viewers can distinguish between your real face and the software enhanced look.
Well, I might not be the best person commenting on this, I hardly go live. So I asked one of my friend who loves to go live almost every day and he liked this feature. He told me that even though he might not use the feature as well but if further polished many social media sensations can start using it so that they don’t have to do a lot of makeup just to go live :p
Daily usage
THe phone performed well in daily usage and it can be a good daily driver especially for those who are looking for a smaller form factor phone. It also comes with the support of micro SD card so all those entertainment junkies can store their music and movies onto it. DO note that you have to give your second sim slot for the SD card support.
Final Verdict
If you are especially looking to buy a phone to go live with then go ahead and buy this phone but If you are not interested in the Live feature and just want a normal day-to-day phone then there are far better alternatives available in the market.