Asus Zenfone Selfie hands-on

Selfies have become engrained into our society, how our infatuation of taken photos of ourselves have almost become a socially accepted thing. Phone nowadays have adapted to carry on this trend, so if you’re into that kind of thing, the Asus Zenfone Selfie is sure to please. A variant of its popular Zenfone 2, the Zenfone Selfie, as its name implies, features 13-megapixel front and rear cameras

Design

Going with what they’ve established already with the Zenfone 2, the Zenfone Selfie’s design is inspired from its sibling. That’s not all too surprising, including how it adopts the same rear volume control placement as its sibling. Compared to other phones, it’s clearly not as stunning, svelte, or premium, but its main intent is to cater to a specific audience – those who naturally love taking selfies.

Display

Utilizing the same screen as its sibling, we’re once again exposed to a 5.5-inch 1080 x 1920 IPS display that’s rich with details and overblown colors. Viewing angles, however, are a little questionable with this one, seeing that at wide angles, there’s some noticeable distortion. Nonetheless, looking at the screen straight on presents no problems whatsoever – so we suppose it’ll do nicely!

Interface

By now, we’re quite familiar with Asus’ ZenUI, which on this phone is running on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop. We’ve run through all the ins and outs of this custom Android experience before, so there’s nothing particular new here with the Zenfone Selfie. It’s quite sufficient for anyone to tell you the truth, seeing that it combines rich personalization of the interface and some productivity features – albeit, it just doesn’t have the true multi-tasking features found on other interfaces.

Processor and Memory

Equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 615 SoC coupled with 3GB of RAM, there’s no arguing that it’s better spec’d than the 5000 mAh battery packing Zenfone Max, so it manages to run in a manner that’ll please users who aren’t quite as demanding. Needless to say, it handles the basic stuff with no fluff, but we’re still skeptical about heavy gaming on it.

Having a 13-megapixel camera can surely take its toll, especially those who are notorious about snapping selfies constantly. Luckily, this one is graced with 32GB of internal storage, which is more than generous, but it’s also sweet that it can be supplemented by throwing in a card into its microSD slot.

Camera

Armed with 13-megapixel cameras, both the front and back, which are sensors from Toshiba, you certainly can expect some better-than-looking selfies. We snapped some during our quick look, but it’s tough to determine its quality looking through its 1080p screen. Don’t get us wrong, they look pretty good, but we can only make a solid call previewing them on a PC. Other changes from the Zenfone 2 include additional shooting modes pertaining to the camera interface – like its wide selfie mode. Besides that, it’s essentially the same as the Zenfone 2 from what we can gather.

Expectations

Asus surely loves to diversify its portfolio, and it certainly shows here with the Zenfone Selfie. Taking into consideration its approximate $250 price point, it’s undeniably attractive because it’s obtainable on almost every budget. However, it’s a bit maddening knowing that it’s a slight alteration to the existing Zenfone 2, so for anyone who bought that smartphone, they might be feeling a bit sour knowing that this one brings more love to the front facing camera.