The Asus Zenfone 6 was designed with the goal to
give power users everything they want. And the company came admirably close,
considering the € 500 price tag. Yes, in a rare move for the mobile industry
these days, Asus didn’t raise the price of its top phone.
Asus had certain design goals in mind. The Zenfone
6, or ZS630KL if you are into the company's product codes, had to be no wider
than 75mm to be comfortable to use. That determined the screen size – 6.4” –
and to make the best of it, there are no notches or punch holes. Instead, a flip-up mechanism was
devised that points the rear camera forward. It’s a combo of a 48MP Sony IMX586
(0.9µm pixels, f/1.8 aperture) and a 13MP 125° ultra-wide angle camera.
The camera can record 4K videos at 60fps with
electronic image stabilization, even in selfie mode. The rotation mechanism can
be used to shoot panoramas automatically or use motion tracking to keep your
subject in frame. Asus also developed HDR+ Enhanced and Night Mode, which rely
on multi-frame synthesis to improve image quality. Back to the screen, it’s a 6.4”
IPS LCD that covers 92% of the front. It has a peak brightness of 600 nits and
supports DCI-P3. Asus used a traditional fingerprint reader on the back instead
of an in-display unit.
There’s no “z” model this year, there’s only one
Zenfone 6 and it’s powered by a Snapdragon 855 chipset. It has up to 8GB of RAM
and up to 256GB of UFS 2.1 storage. Also, Asus didn’t want to make you choose
between dual-SIM and extra storage, so the card slot holds two SIMs and a
microSD. This sentiment permeates the rest of the design too. The phone has
dual amplifiers and is Hi-Res Audio certified. Asus even bundled a pair of
ZenEar headphones (also Hi-Res certified) that you can plug into the 3.5mm jack.
And if you want to go wireless, you’ll enjoy quality aptX HD sound.
After the positive response from its Max series,
Asus wanted a large battery for the Zenfone 6 and it managed to fit a huge
5,000mAh pack. It charges only at 18W, but thanks to its capacity, the charger
can stay in the faster “constant current” mode for longer. This means putting
3,300mAh in the battery takes less than an hour, about as long as a 27W charger
will take to fully charge a 3,300mAh battery. This also extends battery longevity
as it goes through fewer cycles. Wireless charging was not included, because
according to Asus, it's detrimental to the longevity of the battery.
ZenUI 6 has been completely revamped and it looks
almost entirely like the stock Android 9 Pie on which it's based. There are
still various Asus enhancements and the company has promised to prioritize the
upgrade to Android 10 Q and it will deliver the next version, “11 R”, in the
future. The Zenfone 6 will get a minimum of 2 years of security patches on a bi-monthly
basis. The front of the phone is Gorilla Glass 6, the back is also made of
Corning glass. In the middle is a frame of 6000-series aluminum.
The GG6 glass can withstand several falls, but so
can the flip-up camera. It’s made from Liquid Metal – lighter than stainless
steel but 4x stronger – and it will close automatically if you drop the phone.
Asus tested it with up to 100,000 flips, that’s 28 selfies a day for 5 years.
The Asus Zenfone 6 will launch in the EU first at
€ 500 (same price as the Zenfone 5z last year). It will be available from
Asus.com and retail partners from May 23. For more on the Asus Zenfone 6
head over to our hands-on review. It will tell you about the option to manually
rotate the camera at any angle, how it works with third-party camera apps (e.g.
Instagram, Snapchat), the Game Genie, the AudioWizard, and why you shouldn't
call the Smart Key Assistant key.
