Asus has had a strong presence in the Indian market but the Taiwanese company hasn’t been able to penetrate the highly competitive smartphone market. This time, however, Asus plans to turn its fortune with the Zenfone series. The first in the range – the Zenfone 5 will soon be launched in the Indian market but we managed to play with the device briefly for a quick hands-on.
The Zenfone 5 has an interesting design. The back has a matte finish that gives the phone a good grip and has a metallic bottom on the front, giving the phone a premium look from the front.
Powering the Zenfone 5 is Intel’s Atom 1.6GHz dual-core Z2560 processor and 2GB and given our brief tryst with the device, we were fairly impressed by how Zenfone 5 handled regular operations. The Zenfone 5 comes with Asus’ customised user interface called Zen UI, which we feel is a refreshing take with nifty addons like What’s Next widget, Do It later and so on.
The Zenfone 5 supports dual SIM support and features a 5-inch 1280×720 display with Corning Gorilla Glass 3, Android Jelly Bean OS, 8GB internal memory with microSD card slot supporting up to 64GB and 2110mAh battery.
Zenfone 5 comes with a 2 megapixel front-facing camera and 8 megapixel rear-facing camera with an ability to shoot images in low light scenarios.
The Zenfone 5 seems like a decent device given our limited time with the device. However, we’ll put the device through the paces more thoroughly to see if it’s worth the push. The success of the phone will also be dependent on the price it sells. We hope Asus prices it around the Rs. 15,000 mark when they announce it on July 9.
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