Asus Zenfone Live In-Depth Review

Asus had recently launched its Zenfone Live in India and focusing on the audience interested in creating social live video content. Asus boasts this as the world's first smartphone with real-time beautification technology for live-streaming. The new Asus Zenfone Live's main selling point is its live beautification mode in real time, which artificially beautifies your face during live streaming. So, here is our in-depth review on the Zenfone Live.

Design

The design is nothing to boast about and is something inspired from the Zenfone 3-series. The phone does have a 2.5D Gorilla Glass at the front and has rounded edges which make the smartphone comfortable to hold. One thing which really impressed us about the device is its weight. The Asus Zenfone Live weighs just around 120grams and 8mm thick, which makes it much lighter than other phones in the market.

 

The smartphone sports a 5.0" display upfront, a 3.5mm headphone jack on top, power key and volume rocker on the right, on the left you will find the dual hybrid SIM tray, on the back you find the camera setup with a LED flash and the "ASUS" branding, and on the bottom you find the speaker grill, microphone, and the micro-USB port. Zenfone Live is available in three colours Rose Pink, Black and Gold.

Software

The device runs on the Android 6.0.1(Marshmellow) out-of-the-box with the Asus’s Zen-UI skin layered on the top. The software is decent with a bundle of Asus’s apps that make the UI much better and adds some great features to it. The device has cold screen access with a double tap to wake and app launch shortcuts along with the features like flip to silence and an app lock built right in the core. There are some useful and unique apps like the Zenfit and the BeautyLive. There is not much needed to say about the Zen-UI. Its feature loaded and overall experience is truly amazing.

Camera

The Zenfone Live has a 13-megapixel camera at the back with a single LED flash. For selfies and some live streaming, it packs a 5-megapixel camera at the front with a selfie flash. Following are some pictures from both the cameras of the Asus Zenfone Live, which will help you to judge the quality and performance.

Battery

The 2,650mAh battery easily lasted a full-working-day with calling, internet surfing, and some casual gaming. For minimal to moderate usage the device can easily hold up a full day, whereas aggressive users can be a bit disappointed with the battery life lasting only 5-6 hours. However, the device gave me a SOT (Screen-on-Time) of about two and a half hours which can help me to conclude that the device can deliver a SOT of 2.5hrs to 3.5hrs, which is enough for a moderate user. The Zenfone Live doesn't support fast charging but can charge up in 2hrs as the battery is just 2650mAH.

Performance

The Asus Zenfone Live is not made for heavy gaming but can handle some light or medium games easily without any issues. The device won't face any lags with some moderate social media apps running in the background. A user won't face any issues until he throws some heavy games or apps on the phone.

Specifications

Asus Zenfone Live is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 clocked at 1.40GHz coupled with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of inbuilt storage which is further expandable up to 128GB using a micro-sd card. The phone sports a 13-megapixel primary camera with single LED flash and a 5-megapixel front camera with a selfie flash. The device support most of the connectivity options like, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, FM Radio, 4G LTE and it also supports VoLTE.

Pros

• Light-Weight
• Great Microphones
• Live Beautification

Cons

• A bit overpriced
• No Fingerprint Sensor

Verdict

Asus with the Zenfone Live has made a good smartphone that everyone can appreciate, they also have become the market first to bring the Live Beautification feature for live videos with this. The phone as per us is a must buy if you are looking for a secondary smartphone, but if you want to use this as your primary device we would recommend you not buy this and go for some other smartphone in similar price range. Though Asus has kept their promise of delivering seamless live streaming videos, they still have missed out on features which have become a basic offering in this price range like the fingerprint sensor. Asus might have overpriced this phone a bit as you can get the Xiaomi Redmi 4 or the Redmi 3S which are similar phones but for a lower price.