So
if you're one of those people who has ever thought, wow, seems like all the
phones coming out these days look and feel the same, well, this one's for you.
Because this is one of the most contrarian, against the grain set of features
I've seen in a new phone in a long time.
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| ASUS Zenfone 9 |
ASUS Zenfone 9
This
is the ASUS Zenfone 9. And the more you look around the phone, the more
you see it's. Just not like very many other phones.
Design
First
of all, flagship phones these days are getting bigger and bigger than ever. This
phone is actually refreshingly compact. It has slightly bigger bezels, but
those are around a 5.9 inch display. So maybe not many, but pretty close. And
that translates to so many little things just feeling smaller in the pocket,
smaller in the hand. Obviously, reachability of the whole display is easier. And
then you already know most flagships these days are working with glass. They're
usually pretty shiny and glossy backs. This one is plastic, but it is a sort of
a nice textured, softer, touch plastic bag. It's not quite the rough sandstone
of the classic one plus phones, but it is somewhere in between. It's got a
little more grip, which combined with the flat aluminum sides of this phone,
are quite nice to hold. Plus it has all these little design cues. The little
notch cut out around the middle of the power button, the little bits of text on
the back of the phone. Not full on ROG phone levels of text, but it is
something. And the notch cut out around.
Red Phone
Yet
another piece of this phone that you just don't see very often in many new
phones out there. Plus, just when's the last time you saw a red phone? The only
thing I don't like about this design might just be that the size of the camera
bumps makes the whole thing rock when it's flat on the table. But we'll get to
those cameras in a second. A lot of phones have been moving their fingerprint
readers to underneath the display, which, fair, they've gotten pretty good
lately. Maybe haven't improved that much in the last year or two.
Power Button
ASUS
said, we're going to take this power button and we're going to double it as our
fingerprint reader. But not only that, we're going to have a triple as a smart
key, so you can customize both a double press and a long press to start a quick
action. You can start Google Assistant with it, or open literally whatever app
you want. And then not only that, we're also going to have it quadruple
as a reachability hack where you can swipe the button down to pull the
notification shade down at any time, anywhere, from any screen, just like
Samsung did back in the day with the Galaxy S20E I think it was.
And
ASUS has really gone the extra mile just to make sure you can reach everything
on the phone with one hand. They've also got a little edge tool to let you
quickly launch apps with your thumb from the side.
What else do most normal flagship phones have these days?
I
think you could argue a pretty heavily customized software experience is pretty
common. I'm happy to report though that ASUS is taking the opposite approach
with a fairly lightweight just couple of additions on top of nearly stock
Android. So Xenui, which is what it's called, just adds a couple of things here
and there and it's doing wonders for this phone.
Performance
First
of all, for performance, there's no real bloatware here. Things are pretty
light. This phone also has 120 Hz display and combined with the top of the line
Snapdragon 8plus Gen1 and 8 to 16 GB of Ram. Things have been very smooth
pretty much all the time, which is awesome. And for usability, they just find a
couple of places to tuck some extra features into the settings around the
material. You elements that are smart, like little thoughtful additions here
and there. I like that they lifted the display animation speeds that are
usually buried in developer settings and just put it right into the display
settings. They always on display. You can customize a little bit to look
differently and they put a bunch of stuff in the advanced section, including
mapping a double back tap to a custom action or a custom one handed mode for
even better reachability.
And
actually one of my favorites, you can super easily customize which camera modes
show up at the bottom so you aren't always scrolling around looking for the
options you want, no matter which one it is.
Battery
So
the battery life, yo, let me talk to you about the battery life on the phone.
So typically on a smaller phone, especially a small flagship phone, that's one of
the weakest parts of the phone, which makes perfect sense. There's a lot going
on in a small space, so there's not a lot of room for much battery. This
Zenfone9 has a 4300 mAh hour battery,
which is pretty big for the small size of this phone. And when I put my SIM
card in it, honestly I was expecting about the status quo. I set the 120 Hz
refresh rate because that's what I'm into and I got way more than I was
expecting. This phone actually has seriously incredible battery life. It sips
power.
Turns
out this is actually a really good phone to put the Snapdragon 8 plus Gen1 in
because not only is it more powerful at the highest end, but it's also more
efficient than the previous chip. So, great standby time and a lot of quick bursty
stuff is handled, no problem.
But
I was having like heavy days of using a lot of high brightness screen on time
navigation, playing some games, just doing a bunch of stuff that typically
drains phones and it just lasted for a long time. I was having seven plus hour
screen on time days and ending with 10 20 percent left. Really great battery on
the phone.
Camera
And hey, while we're at things that punch above their weight class, the cameras back here, the cameras are probably better than what you're expecting.
Now, the main sensor here is actually the same one that was in the Nothing phone and the ROG Phone 6, both of which took like b to b plus quality photos at best, and were a noticeable step behind the flagships in pretty much every way. So same chip in here.
But two things are different.
- One, they put this entire sensor in this huge six axis hybrid gimbal stabilization setup.
- And two, we know a lot of what makes a good smartphone camera these days is software.
So the Zenfone9
takes photos that look very different from say, the ROG phone, which actually ASUS
also makes, or the Nothing phone. But the Zenfone9 has the closest look of a
pixel phone of any non pixel camera. So a typical Zenfone 9 photo is very
bold and contrasting and saturated. So straight off the rip, it's pretty nice.
If anything, it can have the tendency to go over the top and really over
process and over HDR things that looks kind of harsh. They can really see that
in higher dynamic range situations. But the extra stabilization does help not
just for video, but also for taking less noisy photos in the dark.
At
least on the main camera, it's still not freezing moving subjects very well
because you need a fast shutter speed and a bigger sensor to do that reliably.
But out of all the phones with this sensor, I think this one looks the best.
The ultra wide is also pretty consistent with color to match the main camera.
So shout out to ASUS for their software processing in the Zenfone cameras
over the years, may be pass some of that along to the ROG phone team, maybe
have a meeting or two.
My Opinion
So I've said a lot of positive things about this phone, so I'm just going to say one more, which is I think the price is really good. It starts at $699, which actually when I first started, I put my SIM card on this phone like two weeks ago.
Didn't really know much about it and I hadn't been told the price yet, and
I would have guessed higher than that. It kind of reminds me of when Pixel 5 came out and it was the best pixel at the time, but it was a snapdragon 7
series and it was 90 Hz and we were hoping for like a full flagship pixel. This
feels like a Pixel 5 pro, like two years later, it's got the highest end ship,
it's got a nice screen and incredible battery life. Not a whole lot of
downside. I'm going to say, actually, this phone at this price is my favorite
release this year. I am very impressed with it. Now, it's not perfect and weal ready
know no phone is perfect. It's got a few key trade offs and so I'm going to
nitpick because that's what I have to do. But here's what's wrong with this
phone.
Honest Review
Battery life
So,
battery life is incredible, like I said, but the max charging speed, 30 watts,
that's decent. But there is no wireless charging that's missing. Lots of people
love reminding me that they don't really care about wireless charging, but hey,
almost every other phone at this price is going to at least have the option. So
that's something to note.
Display
And
then this display that I was telling you about, it is definitely super
responsive at 120 Hz with a 240 Hz touch sample rate. But it is a slight step
below the flagships visually. And it maxes out at 800 nits when not showing HDR
content, which can get washed out in direct sunlight.
Camera
Also,
the corner cut out for the selfie camera has this little ring around it that
might be a little more distracting than some people might like.
Speakers
Also,
the speakers and small phone shave never been great because physics, and these
aren't really an exception. They are fine, but they're semi easily blocked.
Soft Touch Red Color
And
then probably the biggest thing I've noticed is this soft touch red color is
very cool and I really like it, but I am concerned about how this will wear.
You can see the edges in the corners of mine are already starting to fade and
turn darker, and that the sunset red color is slightly less vibrant than it was
when I first got the phone. And this is only two weeks. I haven't really had
the phone for that long. So while I haven't seen a phone with quite this finish
of plastic before, I can't vouch for it aging well. Now, just to get ahead of
the comments that I can already see you typing, yes, most people just put a
case on their phone already by default, so it does actually come with this
decidedly more plastic feeling case in the box.
But
yeah, I don't know, I feel like a phone that has a soft touch plastic back
shouldn't have to always have a case on it the way maybe a fragile glass one
might.
Power Button
So,
yeah, that's something to know. And then all the powerbase button features I
was just telling you about. Super. First of all, this is one of the fastest
fingerprint readers in any phone. You just graze it for a second and it unlocks
super sensitive. But then the pull down notification feature. I was
accidentally triggering all the time. It kind of got annoying. So I ended up
turning it off because it was getting in the way. Kind of like on the S10E. I
think I also disabled it. So cool. For a few days, then I turned it off. But
yeah, this power button, this is something sustainable.
This
phone isn't particularly repairable, but it does come in 100% fully recyclable
packaging, and it does come with 30 watt charging brick. But, yeah, as far as
downsides, that's pretty much it. I think I can confidently say this is the
most well rounded compact phone in the world. If you can consider a compact. I
think there's a lot of really great things about this phone, and I'm very happy
to keep using it.
But if you're looking Android phone around $700
This
is probably going to end up extremely underrated in the US. Because you don't
really see Zenfone in carrier stores, so most people don't end up buying
these. But if you're looking around shopping for a great compact Android phone
around $700 don't even think twice. This is a great one to get.
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