User Experience
Let’s start with the photographic aspect of the ZenFone Selfie, which is after all that’s what this phone is all about.
I won’t go in detail about the back camera because it’s pretty much like the ZenFone 2 with slight improvements, even so the ZenFone Selfie’s camera is just as bad as the ZenFone 2’s camera when it comes to balancing exposure.
Here’s what you get when you photograph a plate of food, the exposure goes either towards the bright area (rice) or dark area (meat) and doesn’t balance out to give a satisfying image.
Here’s a comparison between the ZenFone Selfie (top) against the Honor 7 (bottom) – notice how the image at the bottom balanced out the colors very well while the image at the top just fails miserably?
Oh yes it does focus fast but that’s all I can praise about it. Sorry ASUS, you guys really need to catch up on this aspect.
As for the front camera, it does seem that the coverage is wide which I think is great for arm-length selfie, especially for those not endowed with long arms.
Ahhh about them narcissists, ASUS bundled this lovely software so you could make yourself look better. I’m not a selfie person but heck, here’s me giving a demo on the beautification features found on the ZenFone Selfie.
I missed out the demo for the first tab, that’s to make the face look more rosy. The image demo starts with the second tab that smoothens skin, when set to maximum as in this picture I look plastic.
The 3rd tab makes your skin look fairer, pretty neat.
The 4th tab makes your eyes bigger, I look so weird when I set it to maximum. Please, do not give people nightmares with this.
Lastly the 5th tab that makes one slimmer, it’s amazing how one can drop 10Kg in appearance just by a few taps. 😀
Photographic aspects aside, the phone works well as it is. It’s zippy but don’t expect it to be performing well when it comes to games and such, the low-speed Octa-core processor doesn’t handle that well.
Battery wise it works well, I had it serve me as a Wi-Fi hotspot for more than half a day and it still retains some 50% charge. When playing games like Bejewelled it drains about 1% battery per minute which isn’t bad at all.
The screen IPS screen is crisp and clear, not the best in the market but it works fine for most users.
The Verdict
The ASUS ZenFone Selfie (ZD551KL) Android Smartphone retails at RM 999 – what you get is a phone that’s great for selfie. The camera on ZenFone Selfie works fine for general photography purpose, only to fall short when the exposure is challenging. Keep in mind that this is also not the speediest among ASUS’ offerings so if you’re looking for something that has better performance and not attracted by the selfie features then do have a look at the ZenFone 2 model instead.
