Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “This New Smartphone Is NOT What It Looks Like…”.
So I’ve got a special package here, possibly an exclusive in early unboxing, it’s the zenfone 5, and it’s actually, my very first look at the zenfone series. You might be surprised at what this thing packs in at the mid-range price point. Now you can see on the side of the box, we love photo, so you can probably guess, there’s gon na be an emphasis on camera to a certain extent in here. So what do we have here? We have sim tool. A case is included. You got ta love the free case. Now, look it’s that device, so this is kind of like a bluish tone to it.
It shimmers around this focal point where the fingerprint sensor is up here in the top corner. You see the dual lens setup, which is implemented a little differently than other manufacturers. I’Ll tell you more about that.
In a moment, this is the front of the device, and once I boot this up, you’re gon na be able to see we have a new member to the notch family, although in this case a slightly smaller notch than on the iPhone 10 before I boot it Up though, let’s look around the device, you see there’s still a headphone jack, I’m happy to see it. Manufacturers hold on to it. There are some very nice headphones.
They use that Jack speaker as well volume rocker the power switch on the right hand, side and then the SIM tray over here on the left and you’ll see you have expandable storage as well. Also inside the package, we have a quick charger, a headset with an in-ear style, which I always like to see and get the right fit. You have some extra ear tips as well. Many manufacturers aren’t including headsets at all anymore, so this is good to see. Also type C cable to keep it all charged up. Okay, let’s power up the device here now, since I’m filming this just before the announcement price is not exactly official. This thing is gon na compete in the same territory as something like the 1 5 t. Now, there’s gon na be different versions of the zenfone 5 there’s gon na be the 5, the 5 Z and the 5 light. This one is right in the middle of the three. I can speculate a little bit here. I think this is gon na slot into the mid-range and I think it’s gon na represent some pretty decent value. So there you get your first look at the notch cut out.
We can thank Apple, of course, bringing on this trend, but at least it shrunk down. A little bit in this case, surprisingly, this is a 6.2 inch display it’s very easy hold on, but of course, when you’re watching video and whatnot you have to get used to that not sitting up there. Now I do want to test out the fingerprint reader as well fingerprint on the back all right, so I mean that’s doing the job, I’m still a fan of fingerprint sensors.
At this point, you guys heard my whole rant on face ID face unlock in general. I don’t mind the face unlock on the 1 5 t, because it’s fast even there I end up using the fingerprint as well. It’S kind of a thing where you’re like you’re, already unlocking it before you even look at it right like face IDs, not gon na see me from there it’s a bit of a physical adjustment. I also just don’t like the swipe up gesture from below, because for me that’s a two-stage thing: if there’s a bit of an adjustment here and Dennis white, the whole thing could have been over a long time before that with the fingerprint. You know without bowing to your device.
Anyway, people are talking now about the under display fingerprint reader. All these various vivo devices, like maybe that’s the future. I don’t know those don’t seem to be as quick as the traditional capacitive ones on the back or wherever else they happen to be so. Ok now something to keep in mind.
This is a prototype like it’s it’s a pre-release version, even though it’s in the retail box and whatnot, because of that it can’t really evaluate it. Yet this is by no means a review at this point. In the meantime, one of the things I’m excited about on this particular device is the camera implementation, and the reason for that is because they’ve done something similar to LG, where they opted to use the second lens as a wide-angle lens, as opposed to just contributing to Portrait data for depth of field or low-light performance – and you can see that’s represented at the bottom here by these indicators, you got the one mountain or the three mountain to get the the wider angle perspective, I’m gon na show will what I’m talking about there.
We have the stock main camera and, if I switch over to wide I mean you can already see my knuckles in the corner here being picked up by the lens. So that’s just how wide it is. Maybe a better demo of this is, if I use it on myself here so you can imagine I mean I could get like one more person in the frame here put on the wide-angle.
I got here like two people over. I just really like wide-angle cameras. It’S a nice implementation, so it looks like the wide sensor is an 8 megapixel sensor and when I switch to the main camera she had switches to 12 megapixels.
So that’s something to keep in mind. Okay, so wide has no problem. Seeing that thing, and it’s right up in the grill now also you’ve got a pro mode which gives you access to all kinds of settings here.
If you want to go in and toggle, you want to play with the white balance exposure compensation focus, whether it’s auto focus manual focus you can do that all within the professional mode or the automatic mode actually has some AI functionality built in right up there. In that corner, just by pointing this at this object, it figures out that it’s a plant and you’ll see the plant icon pop up in this location over here somewhere. It’S able to learn and figure out what these objects look like, frequently adjust the camera settings accordingly. So you end up with an image like that there, so it’s got a regular selfie mode, but then I also noticed there is a selfie panorama and a gif animation mode.
I’M gon na leave it in Auto the selfie test very important here. So it’s an 8 megapixel image on the front camera. Look how happy that character is the glorious beard hairs which are incredible for autofocus? Might I add now another cool thing that this device has on it that I haven’t seen before? Is this AI boost and that’s gon na boost the performance of the device and juice out some extra horsepower from the Snapdragon 6-3 6, whether you want more power or if you want to save some battery life, so you can turn that off and extend your battery.
But then I don’t know you want to play a game or something you turn on AI boost to juice out a little more performance now. Another emphasis on the zenfone 5 is an improvement in the audio performance over the previous version, so course, as usual, I want to test the audio, so the implementation is actually kind of similar to the new Galaxy S 9, where you have audio coming out of the Earpiece up here, as well as on the bottom and each one kind of represents different frequency range. So you get a little more high-end out of this one in clarity, the low-end and the bass comes out at the bottom. One thanks and you can tell when you cover up the bottom on how that operates these unusual. This is the charge doc so that the speaker is ready to go when you want to take it with you this also, oh, I like oh wow.
I like what they’ve done with the speaker here, certainly for watching YouTube, there’s a lot more clarity coming out of this one, which is weird because this has two forward facing speakers. There might be a little bit more bass on the pixel to excell, but overall, I think the experience on this one is somehow more pleasing. That’S one of the louder phones that I’ve tested absolutely claim music and create your own audio effect with the customized equalizer. This is out of the box. Here: fine-tuned audio output, that fits your headphone configuration. Remember, you do have a headphone jack DTS surround sound for your headphones.
We have normal settings settings for pop rock, vocal and, of course, custom which allows you to toggle in your favorite equalization settings and then there’s also sliders for bass and treble, and you can save your own custom equalizer and we can optimize for Wired or Bluetooth headphones. That’S cool: it’s not just a headphone jack, but it’s it’s a whole suite. Even myself. There are moments where I still find myself in a pinch that I’m carrying the pixel to XL with no headphone jack.
It’S just convenient to have that alright and if manufacturers keep it there, I’m happy it’s pretty bright for a non OLED display. Now it’s important to know that pixel to excel display is not necessarily regarded as the top tier in the game at the moment, but it is surprising when you see them head to head there’s a slightly different color tint to it as well anyways. This is an interesting device to me I mean that’s, why I’m making the video a lot of it has to do with the targeted price point all right. This is the zenfone 5 there’s gon na be the 5 Z and the 5 light. I think it’s gon na be in a compelling spot somewhere around that 400 dollar range. It’S a pretty interesting set of features at that price point. Yes, you have the Snapdragon 636 in here, but you add to it the ability to boost up some of the performance or toggle it back for power, efficiency, which that’s gon na, be a very power efficient chip for battery life and the implementation that they went with. On the dual camera setup, with the wide angle, lens, of course, we’re gon na see more about camera performance on this thing over time, when I can evaluate the final software, but the package as a whole, with the large display in the small form-factor, if you can Get used to the knotch life or if it’s something that doesn’t bother you or if it’s something you saw in the iPhone and you were like, where is the Android version of that? I believe we have our first player in that space right here in the zenfone 5.
You can begin to make that comparison. I’M gon na keep my eye on this one. If you guys want me to dive a little deeper when a final software is out really getting to the nitty gritty, compare it to some other players at this price point, and do me a favor leave a thumb down below. Just to.
Let me know you’re interested in this device and I’ll go ahead and do that. But for now there it is the zenfone 5 unboxed here on unbox therapy. .