Asus has done a good job with the Zenfone 3 series. Now, it’s time for them to take care of the little siblings as well. And in that process, they’re actually trying to improve the Zenfone Go lineup with a small change. And thus comes the Asus Zenfone Live, the smartphone which promises to live stream to any app including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube with live beauty mode. But, is it true? Let’s jump into the review and check it out.
DESIGN
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When it comes to the design, the phone looks great apart from others. It feels light and compact at the same time make it easier to have a good and comfortable grip over it. The back of the phone is made of plastic with a metal finish to it. The antenna bands are visible as well and add up to the design very well. The 2.5D curved glass runs smoothly on the display adding up a nice feel to the hand.
Taking a look at the front, we can see the front-facing camera with speaker grill, LED flash, and the proximity sensor besides that and capacitive keys on the front bottom as well. Turning the phone down, we get a speaker there with micro USB port and a mic. On the right side, we get our volume rockers with the power button whereas, on the left, we have our hybrid SIM tray slot. Taking a look at the back we’re able to see the Asus logo itself and the camera with LED flash below it only. As said above, the antenna bands are easily available.
In overall, the design looks clean and comfortable to hold and lightweight as well. I’m impressed with the design completely.
DISPLAY
Coming to the display part, we get a 5.5-inches HD (1280 x 720) display on the Asus Zenfone Live with curved 2.5D glass protection. The display is actually nice with a DPI of 320 making everything on the device look simple and adaptive to the display. The colors are good, not too saturated, not too bright, just perfect as always expected from the Asus phones always. I should say there’s nothing to talk about the display much, instead, we can talk about other things. The final word, the display is gorgeous and the smoothness you would expect from 2.5D curved glass.
SOFTWARE AND PERFORMANCE
The Asus Zenfone Live comes pre-equipped with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow out of the box with Zen UI as always on top of it. I have shared my views on the Zen UI many times. It is so close to stock in the performance (not that much probably but still) and the only problem comes with the design part when Zen UI fails to impress me (not everyone but a few people out there including me). I like the Zen UI when it was covered on top of Nougat but as always Marshmallow is too much boring. Coming to the performance, it was kinda okayish.
Coming to the performance, it was kinda okayish. I’m a heavy user so, the performance on a device with an octa-core Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 410 processor clocked at 1.4 GHz with Adreno 306 GPU and a 2 GB of RAM isn’t good for me. But at least it is good for the budget-friendly users. The casual apps and games work perfectly without any much hassles but when it comes to heavy usage or heavy games, it starts encountering troubles and troubles only. But when budget is the point here, I wouldn’t complain much about it. I was okay and satisfied with the performance in overall aspect. The software add up well to the performance and bring us a nice and good experience since it is close to stock Android experience.
BATTERY
The battery on the Asus Zenfone Live lasts up a bit longer than I expected it to be. It lasted for me around 18 hours. It also differs from person to person based on the usage as well. I’m a power user and thus any phone requires to boost up the processing? to the peaks making it drain more and more battery. I’m expecting it to last around 19 to 20 hours for an average user himself. The charging time is also good in terms of the provided standard micro USB port. The phone charges in 2 hours from 0% to 100% completely. And taking the battery life and charging time in overall consideration?, I actually like that part.
CAMERA
Well, you would think that there’s something special in the cameras well there’s nothing much. The Zenfone Live comes with a 13 MP rear camera with LED flash and a 5 MP front-facing camera with LED flash as well.
Taking about the front-facing camera, there’s nothing much to get impressed except what the software does, the beauty mode which obviously makes your face look too good that you would start to love the fake face instead of yourself. Seems funny right, indeed it is much funnier than expected. To be honest, there’s nothing much to be impressed about camera but what I like about it is the “Live Beautify” feature which actually is beauty mode when you’re live streaming whether on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter or anything else. I like it so far till now.
Front Camera Samples
Well, same as the front-facing camera, there’s nothing interesting as well. The 13 MP camera does take pretty average kinda photos which does look over exposed sometimes. Colors look a bit brighter than real and the saturation is too lighter than I expected. Here are a quick samples below to take a look for your instance.
Rear Camera Samples
VERDICT
So should you get this? Well, I would suggest this device for the people who are looking for a selfie-centric smartphone under a budget segment and people who go live more on any social media platforms on a daily basis and want to look good in the live just like in the beauty mode. At the price tag of Rs. 9,999 the Zenfone Live seems to be a little bit overpriced but still, you know, you want the best selfies under 10k budget. Well, at this price tag, I would suggest you go with Redmi Note 4 by Xiaomi.
