ASUS ZenFone Selfie Review: All About Taking Great Selfies With a Powerful Front Camera

This is the phone for you if you love taking beautiful selfies and wefies. Available in stylish pastel colours of baby pink, tiffany blue or pure white and at 13 MP for the front and rear cameras, the ASUS ZenFone Selfie boasts a better front camera than its predecessor, the Asus ZenFone 2, which had a 13 MP primary rear camera and only a 5 MP shooter in front for selfies.

The ASUS ZenFone Selfie uses an improved octa-core Snapdragon 615 Processor instead of the Intel Atom in its predecessor. It also packs a strong Corning Gorilla® Glass 4 display offering twice the drop-damage resistance of its predecessor and is 85% less likely to break in daily use, making it more resilient than ever before.

Camera Function & Beautification Mode

Using the Beautification mode in daylight, the selfies I took turned out looking fabulous than many other smartphones by removing my dark eye circles automatically and even allows you to edit your photo further by adding a blush, enlarging the eyes and slimming the cheeks if you wish without downloading extra photo editing apps.

As I was taking selfies in a moving car, the anti-shake stabilisers used to capture moving objects were considered rather decent.

Indoor shoot taken using the Auto mode.

The camera function is relatively easy to use with its preset modes such as Low Light, Night, Auto and Depth of Field, etc. The All Smiles mode will let you select the best facial expression after taking 5 consecutive selfies.

With the ASUS ZenFone Selfie, I can easily take a Time Lapse video like this in a busy mall.

Phone Specifications

– 16/32GB of internal storage that can be expanded up to 128GB via a microSD card.
– A 5.5-inch Full HD high-density screen and Corning Gorilla® Glass 4 for vibrant colour display.
– 13 MP front camera with Dual-LED real tone flash
– 13 MP rear camera with laser auto-focus
– Beautification & Selfie-Panorama mode
– 64-bit Qualcomm Snapdragon Octa-Core Processor with 3GB RAM
– 4G LTE Dual-SIM, Dual Standby & 3000mAH removable battery
– 170 grams

New & Improved ASUS ZENUI

Photo courtesy of ASUS.

ASUS has given its user interface a major revamp this year for better user experience. The ASUS ZenUI allows the use of widgets and features a modernised interface with a clean layout, vivid color themes, animations and new ringtones.

In short, the ZenUI manages your daily schedules and function like your intelligent digital secretary, instead of having to manage information from many apps (e.g. calendar, meeting reminders and weather apps).

Sharing content without internet access (e.g. photo, video, music and all types of files) from your ZenFone is now made easy via Share Link for seamless peer-to-peer file transfer.

However, it’s only limited to ZenFone devices and other Android and iOS users would need to install an app called SHAREIt in order to share content.

Selfies and Wefies with Selfie Panorama Mode

Photo courtesy of ASUS.

The ASUS ZenFone Selfie has a special wide-angle mode, a f/2.2-aperture front lens and 88-degree field of view to allow users to capture more for each photo.

You can also capture panoramic selfies of up to 140 degrees by simply enabling the unique Selfie Panorama mode to snap a photo with your friends with a stunning panoramic backdrop to boot!

ZenMotion

Photo courtesy of ASUS.

This is truly motion gesture at its best. Without even unlocking the phone, I can “wake up” the phone by giving it 2 taps on the screen or draw a “C” on the locked screen to open the Camera function and a “e” to open emails, while a “W” will bring up the browser for internet surfing. For quick access to the front camera for selfie taking, just draw an “S” on the locked screen.

Button Placements

Unlike many smartphones which have their power and volume control buttons located on at the sides, the ZenFone Selfie’s power button is located at the top, which is quite inaccessible for people with small hands like me, given the large 5.5″ phone. Fortunately, you can wake the phone up by double-tapping on the display, thanks to its ZenMotion technology.

The volume control buttons are located on its back and you can also snap selfies conveniently with it using your index finger.

Ergonomic Arc Design

The ASUS ZenFone Selfie has a sturdy, ergonomic curved body, supposedly to make gripping a large 5.5″ phone easier, however, I still find it slippery and would recommend cladding it with a phone cover for better feel and grip.

The removable back cover allows access to the dual SIM slots (perfect for travelers buying an overseas SIM card), the microSD card slot and the removable battery.

Conclusion

The ASUS Zenfone Selfie is a sharpshooter for beautiful selfies and photos under good lighting with its impressive front and rear camera.

The power button could have been better positioned at the side for greater convenience, and running multiple apps simultaneously would slow the phone down, otherwise there is definitely no lag and you could perform your daily tasks with relative ease with its improved processor.

The 5.5-inch phone also has difficulty fitting into my jeans pockets as expected. The battery life is also less than ideal as the power needed to run the Snapdragon Octa-Core Processor drains the battery, but this could easily be counteracted by bringing along a spare battery or portable charger.

Nevertheless, considering the price of the ASUS ZenFone Selfie, its camera is definitely a notch above the rest for the same price range. A pretty solid device, it is also value for money with all its other unique features and offerings.

The ASUS ZenFone Selfie is available at all ASUS brand stores, ASUS authorized retailers and Qoo10 at $379 (without contract) from 26 September 2015.