GADGET GIZMO REVIEW - Asus Zenfone Zoom

GADGET GIZMO REVIEW - Asus Zenfone Zoom



Camera phones are different from dedicated cameras ­ but those lines have been getting blurred with better quality camera phones. The effect is so stark that sales of dedicated cameras have been falling every year (just look at the numbers from the Camera & Imaging Products Association of Japan to see what we mean).

Now, even though camera phones are taking some darn good photos, you still have to move closer to your subject to get them to fill the frame. Digital zoom can get you closer but at the expense of overall image quality. That's where optical zoom comes in handy -and the Zenfone Zoom is the latest example of a camera phone with an actual, zooming lens. This means it has moving lens elements that alter the focal length.

Although an actual zoom lens on a camera is pretty darn cool, Asus isn't the first phone manufacturer to do this. That honour goes to Nokia: the N93i, launched in 2007, had a 3x optical zoom Carl Zeiss lens on a 3.15MP sensor. And it was a smartphone too, running Symbian Series 60.As far as Android cameraphones with optical zoom, it was Samsung who did it first in 2013, with the Galaxy S4 Zoom.They managed to cram in a huge 10x optical zoom with image stabilisation and xenon flash into that. Although to be fair, the device was a phone-camera hybrid (or as some may argue, more of a camera than a phone). Samsung still persevered with the K Zoom a year later but has since not launched anything new.

Coming back, the Zenfone Zoom still has a record -it's the world's thinnest smartphone with 3x optical zoom. It has a zoom lens made by Hoya -a Japanese company well-known for making DSLR lens filters, eyeglass lenses and other optical products. The 10-element lens uses a combination of glass, synthetic and prismatic lenses and according to the company, they're arranged in a `dual-prism periscope' arrangement. These are fancy words for an internal zoom lens, which means that you won't actually see the lenses moving (unless you look very , very closely).

To the consumer, this means a large and thick phone. It's all because of the large camera assembly and you can see exactly how large it is by looking at the flat circular area on the back. Luckily , weight has been kept at a manageable 185 grams. Looking around the device, you'll see more than a passing resemblance to the company's Zenfone range. The phone has a smart metal frame, a removable, leath er clad (yes, real leather) back panel and a large circular camera module. On the sides, you'll see a dedicated camera shut ter and video recording button, a slot to attach a lanyard (one is provided) and a volume rocker that doubles up as a zoom on, rocker (it even has tiny W and T etched for Wide and Tele). Under the back panel are slots for the micro SIM card (single slot) and a microSD slot. The 3.5mm headphone jack is on top while the micro USB port is centrally placed on the bottom edge.

On the camera module, you'll see the fol lowing words proudly emblazoned: 3x optical zoom with OIS, 13 Megapixels f2.7 to 4.8, dual flash, laser AF and Hoya lens.

The flash is a dual tone LED and not a xe non flash as in dedicated cameras. So in short, the camera works! The zoom opens up lots of new possibilities and the cam era app offers loads of custom shooting options and manual control right out of the box. Some of the useful modes in clude slow motion, animated GIF, depth of field, night, low light (drops resolution to 3MP), HDR and time lapse.

We got some great results with the cam era outdoors but it is not as `effortless' as a Galaxy Note 5 or iPhone 6S (and to be fair, these phones cost quite a bit more).

For starters, the camera takes a whole 2.5 seconds to boot up and the zooming ac tion is slow too. In low light, the phone struggles with noise, particularly be cause of the f2.7 to 4.8 aperture. The OIS works great and the AF is fast in most conditions. It records up to 1080p video in good quality .

On the phone itself, the Zen UI is a heavy interface but it is loaded with features, lots of built in Asus software and loads of cus tomisation settings. We liked a lot of the features like call recording, blacklists and screen colour adjustment. The quad core Atom processor is more than up to the task and will breeze through anything you throw at it without stuttering or heating.

Overall, the price is good considering all the features you get: a working zoom lens in a phone that slides into a pocket, 64-bit Atom processor, 4GB RAM and 128GB ex pandable storage.

                

Hitesh Bhagat

ET26FEB16