Table of Contents
Previously this year in August, Asus comes up its new line-up of zenfone 3. It was launched among some of the best premium looking devices with high end price. Now, they are up with new line of their budget device zenfone Max and landed with Zenfone 3 Max. The Max gets its name because of its huge battery of 5,000mAh battery whereas this new ZenFone 3 Max packs in with a smaller 4,100mAh power. The ZenFone Max has conducted as a budget smartphone a price of Rs 9,999.
But, this time we have two different variants of ZenFone 3 Max which is available. The 5.2″ variant is coming up with a MediaTek chip and will cost you Rs 13,999. The other one is a 5.5″ variant which comes up with a Snapdragon 430 and will cost you Rs 17,999. There are some other minor changes which are there in these model, and we will talk about it in another post.
Key Specs
| Operating system | Android Marshmallow 6.0 with ZenUI 3.0 |
| Display | 5.5-inch IPS LCD 1920×1080 |
| Processor | Qualcomm MSM8937 Snapdragon 430 |
| RAM | 3GB |
| Internal Storage | 32GB MicroSD up to 256GB |
| Battery | 4100mAh |
| Rear Camera | 16MP, f/2.0, PDAF Dual LED flash |
| Front Camera | 8MP, f/2.2 |
| Dimensions | 151.4 x 76.2 x 8.3 mm |
| Weight | 175 g |
So, here starting with the 5.5″ Variant:
Design & Built
Now starting with the Design and built of Zenfone 3 Max, this times the phone houses in Full Metal Chassis and no plastic and leather feel. The design is something which is being unique to Asus. This is the identical design which they have used in Zenfone 3 laser which is again there new line up. Zenfone 3 Max added a round curved to its edges which adds a proper grip while holding it in hand. At Least the build quality is better than the cheap, plasticky feel which we get in original ZenFone Max.
3D View is coming soon here
The successor of Zenfone 3 max, has made a whole lot of changes in its latest release. This they have added a 2.5D curved glass on top of 5.5″ FHD Display panel which adds extra protection as well as looks to the phone.
On the Top portion of the phone, you will get a 3.5mm audio jack and a secondary MIC over there.
Turning around to the down portion, it houses single Speaker grill a primary mic and normal micro USB port which supports fast charging.
Coming to the left side of the phone you will get a supports Dual Sim at the same time or single sim + Micro SD card up to 256 GB which make it a hybrid SIM tray.
Turning around to the other side of the phone you will get volume rockers and below that power lock key which give quite good tactile feel and also has a particular design feels on it.
At the back panel of the phone you will get a 16MP camera beside it Dual Tone LED Flash and Laser autofocus sensor, below that it houses a FingerPrint sensor which works perfectly even with 360 Degree Recognition. Just put your finger on it and in 0.3 ns or may be less it will unlock the device.
Display
Asus Zenfone 3 Max comes with a 5.5-inch FHD with a resolution of 1920×1080 and pixel density of 403 ppi. The Display colors are very cool, and has proper dark which means while watching movies and playing games will look way better. The Sunlight legibility this time has also increased because of better brightness level. The High brightness level does not affect the color quality of the display. Overall the screen for movies and games and for daily use is great.
Coming to the viewing Angle, they are good enough and you won’t be getting any chance to complain about it. While watching movies from odd angle won’t affect you in any way. There are different color modes, which you can change as per your usage by going into the setting panel.
Performance
The phone comes with Snapdragon 430 Helio Octa-core processor which is clocked at 1.4 GHz which features a 3GB Ram. This combo makes this device high in this price. Out of 32 GB of internal storage you get about 25 GB free, you can expand it to up-to 256GB because the phone support Hybrid SIM tray.
Snapdragon handles are device quite well. As well already know asus has optimized there ZenUI to give maximum battery power, and as this device is from MAX series battery backup is quite well. On heavy and aggressive usage you can easily last for more than a day and if you are having a normal use the battery will easily last you for more than 2 days.
Different Benchmark score for this device seems to be quite low:
| Antutu | 44211 |
| Geekbench | 3063 Multi- Core |
But overall when we play high end games like GTA, Riptide, Nova 3, Assassin Creed they all work fine no frame drops or lag is there. In my test i have played all the above mention games on continuous basis there is no battery drain, no heat up and no lag. May be this is all because of software optimization. Oveall in daily use i have no issue regarding the performance part of the phone.
Camera
So, this time Asus Zenfone 3 Max comes up with 16 MP rear Camera which is really improved from the previous max Device. This time they has better camera application with manual controls which are great. The focus and bokeh effect us quite good but i don’t know why while taking images there some noise in every image, it may be due to some software tweak if we edit it a little bit you won’t find any issue in images. from past couple of days the images which i am being posting on my social media are taken directly by Zenfone 3 max and i have no complaints to it. They only need to consider why there is noise in every image. One more thing i wanna mention is that sometime camera won’t focus in certain objects, so to make them focus either you need to change to manual controls or close the camera app and open it again and then it will work fine. Again a software issue is there which stop the laser focus to properly focus on the object. Rest from the time asus has improved a lot with their sensor and much better bokeh effect while focusing from rear camera. The camera can take video shots top upto Full HD and no 4k recording is there untill and unless you install a third party software to make it work.
Coming to the front facing camera of zenfone 3 max, it comes with 8MP shooter with built in feature of beauty mode. images taken using it come out decent but again some noise if we turn off beauty mode. Coming to the video quality taken from front facing cam it can capture up to Full HD video, which seems to be good compare to there older models. But again when we come to front facing cam there are many other options also which are way better from it.
Camera Samples
Software
I never like the ZenUI which they came up. This time they have Android 6.0 and top of it again ZenUI skin which is very laggy and buggy, only the best part of this UI is best battery optimization, rest on multitasking and almost everywhere is seems to be sluggish and laggy. Even if you install a side launcher it seems to be little bit better. My suggestion for asus will be to change the ZenUI to stock android to get better performance and better multitasking even with any low end hardware specs, or they should work harder like Xiaomi to get the best SKIN for android till now which is MIUI 8. The lag and slugginess is not due to hardware, it is due to software. This lag starts when you start installing many different software and start doing multitasking intensively. If you are a normal user like normal parents in house, they wont be complaining anything about it. They will only say one thing battery life is awesome no charge for more than 2 days.
Battery
Like the previous device from Asus, Zenfone Max it has slightly low battery but still it give its best in it. Due to Software optimization the battery life is really good. It comes up with 4100mAh battery which is similar to other Xiaomi devices but this is way better in each aspect. Standby time is incredible, rest playing games, movies aggressive chats it will last you more than a day easily. If you are having a normal use like normal games, normal chat, high talks it will easily last you more than 2 days. The just love the battery life of this phone. The only drawback is even having fast charging it charges very slow. 0% to 60% in about 2 hours.
Verdict
After using the device for couple of days i don’t know why Asus has fixed the price so high which is Rs. 17,999, but that UI and no Volte update till now ruined it. They are promising to shoot a update soon which will make volte support to all there 4G supported phones. Overall if we consider the device as per the looks, battery and offline availability its a thumbs up, else for better UI and better performance there are other devices also with low budget and same metal built.
Positive
- Battery
- Full metal Built
- Screen Quality
Negative
- Pricing
- UI
