ASUS made waves recently with their ZenFone line of smartphones. They put out the ZenFone 3 Zoom and the ZenFone AR just in the first half of 2017. Another phone launched during that period is the ZenFone Live!
Unlike the ZenFone 3 Zoom and ZenFone AR, the ZenFone Live is for budget-conscious buyers. It is specifically for people who love to make live videos! Thanks to Philip (of Cebu Finest and Skip the Flip) for letting me use this phone for a week!
Without further ado, here’s my ASUS ZenFone Live first impressions!
What’s Inside The Box?
The stuff inside the box is fairly the usual when it comes to smartphones. If I have to nitpick on one thing, it’s the fact that the accessories are white! I wish phone makers made the color of all their accessories the same with the phone itself. Oh well, all for the sake of keeping the cost down I guess.
Spec Details
Before I get into my ASUS ZenFone Live first impressions, here are the specs of this budget-friendly smartphone:
- 5-inch 720p IPS LCD display
- 2 GB RAM
- Dual Nano-SIM (either use both SIM slots or one SIM and one microSD)
- 16 GB internal storage with microSD card slot (up to 256 GB)
- Quad-core 1.2GHz Cortex-A53 processor
- 13-megapixel rear camera with f/2.0 aperture and LED flash
- 5-megapixel front camera with f/2.2 aperture AND LED flash
- Android 6.0 with ASUS ZenUI
- Retails at P6,995
First Impressions!
When I first held the phone, it shocked me as to how light it was! We’ve really come a long way from the heavy and bulky phones of years past. I always liked black front glass displays on the smartphones I want to use. The ASUS ZenFone Live uses capacitive buttons on the bottom as opposed to on-screen ones. The screen is bright enough for me although it kind of struggles outdoors. Let’s see if it holds up when the brightness is at 100%.
Since I am an iPhone user, the ZenFone Live really felt right at home. I have bigger-than-usual hands, but the phone really fits well in them. It also helps that the aluminum back is grippy enough for me. For a phone that costs P6,995, I love how it performs. I haven’t pushed the phone to its limits a lot, so we’ll see how it goes before I review the phone.
After I took the first shots using the ZenFone Live’s camera, it impressed me. Even though there are hints of softness in the picture, I can confidently take some decent shots with it. For a phone less than P10K, that’s good!
The downward-facing speaker is surprisingly loud! I legitimately got shocked while I played some music on the ZenFone Live. Video watching is great with this phone thanks to the speaker! ZenUI is good in this phone. Although I still prefer stock Android, the software included in the ZenFone Live does not slow down the performance of the phone. I will go into more detail about the software in my full review.
Well, that’s it for my ASUS ZenFone Live first impressions! Would you like a phone that focuses more on live streaming and media consumption? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below!
Thanks for this review, Juls. I was interested with the Zenfone Live the first time it was released because I heard pretty good reviews about it. For a phone that’s only around 7k, it’s pretty impressive.
Really surprised as to how fast it was! Still not as fast as an iPhone though.