Review battrey and camera Zenfone 5.

REVIEW USER REVIEWS SPECS 32 PHOTOS Awards Recommended by TR More Photos Summary Our Score8/10 User Score Review Price £149.99 Asus Zenfone 5 – Camera The Asus Zenfone 5 has an 8-megapixel main camera, and it has a flash to help out in low-light conditions too. The camera is one of the areas where the ZenUI software really sticks its oar in too. A custom camera app gives you loads of extra features and a slightly different interface to the standard Android one. Zenfone 5 19 It’s pretty easy to use, and handily suggests modes you might want to sure (the most useful being Night) just before you shoot. It doesn’t do so with the annoying insistence of a backseat driver, either. Most of the extras are fluffy things like fake depth of field effects, tilt shift and portrait enhancing, but they’re fun and sensibly laid-out – a bit like the Galaxy S5 camera UI in fact. There are also very handy low-light modes that, as we’ll see in a minute, are pretty useful. Here's a quick look at the app: Zenfone 5 23 Zenfone 5 41 Shooting performance is reasonable, but it’s where we see the Zenfone 5’s only real camera issues. Focusing seems to be a little faulty. With subjects around 1m away, the phone often seems to misreport being in focus, leading to blurry pictures. This should be easily fixable with a software update. Shooting speed is also not lightning fast thanks to slightly slow focusing/processing speed – among phones in general if not phones at the price. There’s about a 1.7sec delay between shots, which is not super-fast. The Asus Zenfone 5 mitigates by offering a Turbo mode that holds focus and shoots up to 100 shots at about 5fps, at 2MP. It’s dead easy to access having its own button right by the shutter, and is perfect for shooting fast action. While not quite a full replacement for slightly faster shooting, it’s nice to have. How’s image quality? It’s rather good, for a phone that starts at under £200. We’re impressed with the metering of the Asus Zenfone 5. It generally produces quite nice and bright photos, without having a particular habit of heading into serious overexposure. It’s easy to take good shots, and you can clearly see the extra detail you get over some 5-megapixel cameras at £100-150. We think it has a much better camera than the Motorola Moto G, for example. The inbuilt HDR mode is effective, very effective, but can be a little heavy-handed. While it brings out additional detail, you often lose out on some contrast in brighter areas and it does cause a slight halo’ing around objects. This reduces how natural your shots look. Here are a few samples: Zenfone 5 9 Here's a great example of the Zenfone 5's sensible exposure and decent dynamic range. The skeleton is clear despite the bright window highlights above, which are overexposed but not destructively so. Zenfone 5 43 The HDR mode is effective, but does not produce hugely natural-looking shots, with clear outlines 'drawn' around objects. Zenfone 5 45 HDR... it makes a difference What’s also interesting is the pair of low-light modes in the Zenfone 5. There’s a standard Night mode that boosts sensitivity at full resolution, and a special super-power low-light mode that reduces resolution to 2MP in order to produce a much cleaner-looking image. It’s not just down to the reduction in resolution as it also ramps-up brightness quite substantially (resulting in overexposure is there are lighter areas), but we found it very useful. It’s great for making low-light images look much brighter, where they might otherwise be a murky smudge. Zenfone 5 This room was a good deal darker than it appears in this shot. The Zenfone 5's extreme low light modes can produce minor miracles not common in budget phones. While the Asus Zenfone 5 camera experience is a little buggy at present – the focus issue being the worst offender – we do appreciate what Asus is trying to do. And much of it is great. Asus Zenfone 5 – Battery Life There are lots of things to like about the Asus Zenfone 5. If you don’t care about 4G it’s a top budget option. However, the battery is a slightly weak link. The phone has a 2110mAh battery, which is similar to the capacity of the Motorola Moto G despite having a significantly bigger display.Zenfone 5 33 The Zenfone 5 battery is non-removable In use stamina is reasonable, but we wish it was slightly better. With normal usage, running off 3G all day, you’ll have around 20-25% battery left by bed time. It’s not a terrible result, but it’s not quite as strong as the more famous 5-inch phones. It is much better than the Zenfone 4, though, which struggled to make it though the day. Zenfone 5 The Zenfone 5 can make it thorugh the day, but without a huge buffer Left to play a looped 720p MP4 video with mid-level brightness, the Zenfone 5 lasts for seven and a half hours. It’s not a patch on what we got out of the Xperia M2 (11 hours), but is a respectable-ish score that’s way clear of the danger zone 4.5 hours the smaller Zenfone 4 manages. Asus Zenfone 5 – Call and Sound Quality What about the basics? Asus has not put all that much attention into the call quality or speaker quality. They are fine, but nothing more. Calls exhibit a slightly scratchy treble, although clarity is otherwise perfectly good. And the mono speaker on the back does not excel in any particular area – it’s not tremendously loud and doesn’t offer greater bass or power than the norm. It’s not a horrible, harsh mess, though. That may not sound like a compliment, but it is something to check in a new, unknown phone range. Zenfone 5 7 Should I buy the Asus Zenfone 5? After the searing disappointment of the Asus Zenfone 4, the Zenfone 5 is a real relief. It’s better in almost every respect, and easily merits the extra cash. It's an excellent phone in most respects, and should help put Asus on the map as a phone-maker to watch out for if you want a good-value phone. For now it’s a pretty good alternative to the Motorola Moto G if you want a slightly larger screen. If that sounds like you, stick it on your shortlist. There are just a couple caveats. One is the 5-inch silhouette of the Motorola Moto G2, expected for release soon. The Zenfone 5 is the best-value 5-inch phone on the market right now, but that it's a tentative award so long as the Moto G2 is waiting for release. If you can, it's worth waiting for. The other is if you demand 4G. If you do we'd consider the more powerful Nexus 5 or LG G2, or the 4G version of the Moto G, which costs about the same as the Zenfone. Verdict There are a couple of little bits to tweak in the Asus Zenfone 5, but the value on offer here is fantastic. Other 5-inch phones at the price don’t get you screens anywhere near as good as this.