Cameras have quickly become the most important feature of smartphones, but Asus wants to take it to the next level. st announced at CES, the ZenFone 3 Zoom is packed with features designed to make it a shutterbug’s dream, it just might be the best hset for mobile photographers, assuming its Snapdragon 625 chip can keep up.
The ZenFone 3 features a stard 5.5-inch Full HD AMOD screen thin all-metal body, but it’s the back of the device where things start to get interesting. st above the fingerprint sensor is where you’ll find the hset’s dual-camera system (positioned in the upper-left corner rather than the center), which consists of a 12M f/1.7-aperture, 25mm wide-angle main lens a 12M 56mm camera for 2.3X zoom. Asus has also designed an ione 7 us-esque rtrait mode, which blurs the background around your subject to generate a depth-of-field effect.
y this matters: Asus isn’t exactly the first name in smartphones here in the U.S., but the ZenFone 3 could be a game-changer for the company. Assuming it has a reasonable price tag the chip doesn’t slow the system down too much, the hset could settle into a nice niche market for people who primarily use their smartphones to take pictures.
int shoot
The ZenFone 3 Zoom also uses an improved TriTech+ autofocus system with Dual xel technology for speedy focusing, the main camera takes advantage of what Asus calls Superxel technology to “dramatically” boost light sensitivity. As the company describes, “ZenFone 3 Zoom uses the Sony IMX362 sensor with pixels measuring 1.4 microns wide, which are among the largest of any smartphone camera sensors, making the camera excellent for low-light photography.”
AsusAsus’ ZenFone 3 Zoom features one of the most sophisticated dual camera systems a smartphone has ever seen.
And the camera on the front is nothing to sneeze at either. The ZenFone 3 includes a 13Mselfie camera a new “screen flash” mode that utilizes the brightness of the display as a flash when taking low-light shots. It also supports RAformat allows full manual control over the cameras settings, letting users choose to tweak either camera.
Elsewhere, the phone includes the aging Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 processor, a curious choice for such a photo-taking powerhouse. However, roaming photographers shouldn’t have any problems with all-day use thanks to an eye-popping 5000mAh battery. Asus claims the ZenFone 3 will provide 40 days of stby on 4G or 6.4 hours of non-stop 4K video shooting. And it’s extremely light, too, weighing only 0.37 lbs, less than the ione 7 us just two grams more than the xel X
AsusThe ZenFone AR supports Tango Daydream.
Dose of (augmented) reality
Asus also released the ZenFone AR, which combines ’s fledgling AR VR projects under one roof. As previously leaked by Qualcomm, the phone utilizes the same Snapdragon 821 processor that’s found in the xel, which should give the phone enough power to the hle the heavy dems of motion tracking 3D rendering:
“th 6GB of RAM the desktop-class Qualcomm Adreno 530 graphics processing unit that delivers supercharged graphics performance, the ZenFone AR hles the graphics dems of Tango Daydream with ease.”
xel owners know all too well how hot their phones can get when using Daydream for extended periods, but the ZenFone AR includes a “sophisticated vapor cooling system” to prevent overheating. Finally, the hset introduces a new audio system that supports hi-res audio DTS virtual surround sound.
