SMARTPHONE REVIEW.... ASUS ZENFONE AR - Delivering New Experiences

ASUS  ZENFONE AR - Delivering New Experiences





Zenfone AR is the world's first Tango and Daydream ready phone. Basically, it's tailor-made to give you better virtual reality and way better augmented reality experiences. We'll get to how in just a minute. It looks fairly conventional from the front: front fingerprint, a large (5.7inch) super amoled screen and fairly thin side bezels. Around the back is where it gets interesting. There, you'll see the `Tri Cam' system: there's a conventional camera (23MP f2.0 with 4-axis OIS) plus depth and motion sensors. This is a similar system to what you would find on Xbox Kinect -except shrunk down to smartphone proportions.

The hardware enables all sorts of new augmented reality experiences. You may have tried AR apps on your smartphone before; however, there are a few key differences.Your smartphone just has a regular camera. Any AR app can overlay items on this camera view. But your phone will not be able to accurately judge distances or align virtual items to your current perspective.With Tango on Zenfone, you could draw in mid air and then walk around your drawing to inspect it from all sides. Another app can place a full size car in front of you -using your phone screen, you can step inside the car and look around.You can place virtual furniture in your home (and walk around it or away from it -the furniture scales and changes perspective automatically). Games can immerse you like no other phone can. You can have virtual pets that react to your commands and you can accurately measure distances between two points on the screen. The effect is uncanny and the possibilities are huge -especially with retail and gaming. With DayDream, you can use Google's VR headset and controller for some excellent virtual reality experiences. It's not much different from any other VR experience except that the controller enables a more precise control of VR elements and a way to interact with your surroundings. The high resolution, 551 pixel per inch, amoled screen and high refresh rates also play a big part in the VR experience.

Coming to the phone experience, the camera is pretty special. Lot of resolution, pin-sharp clarity and an excellent 4-axis OIS system. The OIS doesn't work with video though. It has Android 7.0 skinned by Asus' overbearing ZenUI -it really seemed like the skin was slowing the phone down because it has so many extras. You may want to switch to a simpler launcher for more speed. Otherwise, performance with gaming and multimedia is spot on, with the 8GB RAM keeping everything in check. Battery life without using ARVR is a full day .ARVR can drain your phone pretty fast so keep a charger handy if you plan to use them regularly .

So is the price justified? Well, that depends on how excited you are with the concept of better AR and VR

Hitesh Bhagat

ET11AUG17