Producing a smartphone that takes a perfect selfies is the latest trend that every device maker is following. We have already seen a lot of smartphones that are capable of taking jaw-dropping pictures with their front cameras. ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro is another selfie-centric smartphone that will compete against the much crowded selfie possessed market. And by cramming in a 24MP front-facing dual camera setup, ASUS does mean business.
Priced at Rs 23,999, the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro has high-end features on the brochure. The smartphone uses company’s own ‘Selfie Master’ app and Portrait mode. But is the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro worth shelling out your money? Let's find out.
Design
Weighing just at 147g, the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro is a lightweight smartphone. It doesn't feel heavy in hands and offers appealing looks and a good grip. It features a metal unibody design with a home button housed on the chin of the phone and also doubles as a fingerprint sensor. The smartphone has narrow bezels, which along with the curved Corning Gorilla Glass complements the overall design of the smartphone.
On the rear panel we have a camera besides an LED flash followed by the ASUS branding engraved in the centre. The buttons offer a good feedback but the volume rocker are hard to reach if you are a righty.
In terms of design, the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro is a looker. It is built solidly and offers a premium look. ASUS seems to be doing away from the sturdy, chunky smartphones and finally offering something you would like to flaunt in public.
Display
The Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro comes with a 5.5-inch AMOLED display with 1080 x 1920 pixel resolution, one that is capable of producing crisp colour reproduction while offering great viewing angles simultaneously.
The icons on the display look sharp and colours come out balanced and the sunlight legibility of the phone is good while the auto brightness setting works as a charm.
Over saturated colours are very common with OLED, but users can customise the settings opting from three different modes - Bluelight filter, Super colour, Standard. The display settings also let users change the screen saturation manually. The overall experience of watching movies or playing games was good on the Zenfoe 4 Selfie pro.
Camera
The biggest highlight of the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro is its 24MP front facing dual lens snapper. The setup consists of a 24MP DuoPixel lens of aperture f/1.8 and a 5MP wide-angle lens of aperture f/2.2. The smartphone uses a 16MP sensor for its primary rear camera.
The front snapper is as good any other dual camera setups incorporated on other high-end smartphones. The camera sure does offer the bokeh effect, but it isn't something you would prefer very often. To accommodate more people in your selfie, the camera also has a wide angle lens that captures bigger pictures. The selfie camera is also capable of taking videos in 4K quality at 30fps.
The primary camera also does a decent job of capturing pictures with good amount of details and very less noise. The pictures taken in good lighting conditions come out crisp while the low light pictures are not as good as one would expect.
Performance
The Zenfone Selfie 4 Pro has a Snapdragon 625 processor at its heart paired with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage which is expandable. The performance of the device is without a doubt smooth and we didn't notice any major lag while our time with the device. The device was able to handle multitasking with ease and there wasn't any stutter while switching between apps or playing high end games.
The device runs on Zen UI 4.0 wrapped around the Android 7.1.1 Nougat and is heavily customised, resulting in a lot of pressure on the processor. The chipset however manages to take the beating without making the device sluggish.
The device is fuelled by a 3000mAh battery with support for quick charging. Thanks to the optimised operating system, the battery usage is minimal allowing you to use the phone for a full day on moderate to heavy usage. If you only use the smartphone for calls and other general tasks, it will surely last more than a day, however if you are a heavy user then you might have to charge the device at the end of the day.
Verdict
Overall the Zenfone 4 Selfie Pro is an excellent device that offers top-of-the-line features such as a brilliant selfie camera, a good display and decent battery reservoir. The device is surely superior than its contemporary Vivo V7+ and offers a well optimised software.
Although, ASUS managed to bring a feature-rich phone that can surely give others a run for their money, but priced at Rs 23,990, the device still feels a tad on the expensive side. But if you are a video blogger or like taking a lot of selfie videos, the 4K recording would surely help.
