Smartphone Asus ZenFone 2 ZE500CL: reviews and features

In March 2015, Asus announced a whole line consisting of three models of devices. It's about Zenfone 2, and its three variations share only the concept of design, whereas the technical content of the ZE551ML, ZE550ML and ZE500CL is completely different.

The hero of our today's review will be the latest version of the ZE500CL. It is positioned as the "youngest" of the above devices, respectively, with the most modest parameters and the lowest cost. Despite this, she also has something to boast about. Do not believe me? Remember the success of Asus-devices in the market of tablet computers. For some reason, there are assumptions that such a company can achieve with smartphones, using the same approaches and betting on the same values. The same can happen with the ruler, which includes Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL. Customer feedback, at least, this does not exclude.

The concept of the model

Let's start with the mini-characteristics of the phone, which is described today, in general. By price, Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL 16Gb can be attributed to the lower price class (within 10-11 thousand rubles as of the moment of writing the article); While in terms of its characteristics and design, the model can compete well with more expensive devices. This is facilitated by the technology of the smartphone, its well-coordinated work, optimized processes that occur in the device.

The phone comes in two versions, which differ in the amount of internal memory (8 and 16 GB respectively), as well as the cost (albeit insignificantly, within 1 thousand rubles). However, this should not be so important, since the device supports the work of a microSD memory card, due to which it is possible to expand the memory of 64 GB, and this is enough for a huge amount of content of any type.

To understand more, what is a smartphone Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL (8 GB), read our review further.

Equipment

By tradition, I would like to start a more detailed description of what is included in the package with the phone. After all, if branded and more well-known manufacturers are "modest" in this respect, the less popular developers belonging to category B and C brands, in contrast, put various accessories into the box with the device, providing the buyer with everything necessary. And how about Asus?

Opening the box, you first notice the device itself - the dark shine of its display and the glare on the side edges, painted "under the metal." Lifting the splitter, you will find the instructions for using the device, as well as the charger. Those who expected the manufacturer to take care of providing headphones, an extra battery or a case for the device in the basic set, are forced to upset. But if you want, you can buy it all. True, in the review participated an official phone, delivered "in white". In preparation for publication, we were able to establish that in the set of phones that were imported into the country in a "gray" way, there were also headphones.

But speaking of official sales, we can say that the Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL mobile phone is sold in the "nothing more" format.

Design

Call the "shovel" smartphone will not work - due to a 5-inch screen, the device seems compact and habitually lies in his hand. In developing the appearance of the phone Asus borrowed the idea of Nokia, which consists in the design of the front of the device in dark color (thus, the line between the display and the frame around it is visually erased, due to what the size of the first seems much larger). The back cover of the phone is somewhat rounded and executed in a certain color (there are only three of them: black, white and red). The plastic cover is pleasant to the touch, does not slip and looks attractive.

On the navigation elements, as reported by the reviews related to the Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL reviews, the device does not show anything new: on the top (center) is the screen lock button, the bottom panel has placed the physical keys of the "Home", "Back", and the search button Information. The only feature is, perhaps, the sound adjustment key, which instead of the side face was placed on the back of the smartphone, directly under the camera. Whatever you say, but this decision is original and, as practice has shown, is quite justified. The connector for charging the phone is at the bottom, and the audio connector is opposite, at the top.

The smartphone is assembled, according to the reviews written about the Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL reviews, quite qualitatively. At least in everyday use, no squeaks in the panels of the device are not felt - it seems that everything sits monolithically. But this is not so. The phone removes the back cover, although the battery here is not removable. This is done in order to insert a memory card or SIM.

Screen

The five-inch display of the device operates on the basis of the IPS-matrix, which allows us to speak about the high brightness and saturation of the colors transmitted to them. The screen resolution is 720 by 1280 pixels, which gives the image density at 294 pixels per inch (good indicator, it speaks for clarity of the image).

Over the display is fixed a protective glass Gorilla Glass 3, which, according to the developers, is able to withstand the appearance of scratches, chips and other damage, even resulting from severe impacts of the device. Describing Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL reviews indicate that the phone has a very good color rendering: the display does not fade in the sun and saves the image even as a result of tilting and turning.

CPU

What kind of technical stuffing is contained in the phone determines its further behavior - speed, reaction speed, stability and other indicators. Speaking of the Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL 16Gb, we can note a fairly strong processor Intel Atom Z2560. It operates on the basis of two cores, the clock frequency of which is 1.6 GHz. Coupled with 2 GB of RAM, this equipment allows us to talk about the high level of performance of the smartphone, noting its ability to work even with bulky games without slowing down and reducing the quality of graphics.

If the dry numbers of the characteristics do not impress you, you can trust that this device is a product of Asus. It becomes obvious that the manufacturer, apparently, conducted the processor optimization. The same can be evidenced by the almost complete lack of heating of the smartphone in its operation, which, in turn, favorably affects the battery power consumption.

Even if you do not plan to play on it as a user of Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL Black, you can still be sure that with its basic tasks (like banal switching of some less demanding in terms of application performance), the smartphone will do fine.

Autonomy

We already touched on the work of the battery, noting that during the operation the smartphone processor does not heat up, which already solves many difficulties in the form of a fast charge. In addition, a battery with a capacity of 2500 mAh can provide the phone with up to 28 hours of talk time, and up to 360 hours of normal device downtime. This figure is slightly higher than most other Android phones of the same price class.

However, characterizing the smartphone Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL reviews indicate that with autonomy here everything is bad, and the declared figures are far from reality. Like, in fact, the phone is able to last no more than 3-4 hours of video playback, after which it is completely discharged. Unfortunately, this information was confirmed by several opinions of buyers, therefore, perhaps, on paper Asus declares not real indicators, but their goals, which have no real grounds.

Camera

On the device, as you could guess from the pictures presented in the review, two cameras are installed. We can say that this is a traditional set for similar devices. Of course, this is a frontal (for "Selfie") and the main camera (the latter is located on the back of the phone). The characteristics of both are as follows: the resolution of the matrix of the main camera is 8 megapixels, whereas the front one has a resolution of 2 megapixels. The quality of photos on both can be called normal, if compared with other devices on Android.

As shown by the Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL user characteristics, the images on the front camera are obtained with a slightly reduced color gamut. For example, on white areas the photo can be rendered in a bluish color. But this problem is also not so important - the details of the images compensate for this drawback.

The main camera shoots qualitatively. With the flagships of matrices, of course, it can not be compared, but there's nothing to complain about here. The flash allows you to take pictures in dark conditions, and the details in the picture can be transferred using the autofocus function.

Still making good pictures allows the availability of different modes. In particular, it's HDR, macro and auto-shooting, the "maximum distance" and "low light" modes. There is the possibility of creating geotagging.

The video can be shot in 1080p format.

operating system

As already noted, the gadget runs on Android OS, version 5.0 (the name Lollipop). Now, obviously, users will be able to update to version 6, which fixed some errors of the previous generation.

Also, it should be noted that the model has a special ZenUI graphical shell used on Asus devices. From the "bare" system it is distinguished by the presence of original icons, more colorful transitions, as well as a set of proprietary software. The latter include the applications Asus Do it later, Email-client, Splendid. The developer did not disdain and the installation of partner programs, such as Kindle, TripAdvisor, CleanMaster. The practice is that most people simply remove these programs, preferring to use their own set of applications. We found that some feedback on the Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL 16 GB is called the designated UI is not as attractive in appearance as pure Android. Apparently, this is a matter of taste.

Multimedia

The device's capabilities for working with entertainment content are huge. For example, the Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL 16Gb smartphone is able to play all the most popular audio and video formats. The same ones that will not be launched in the base player can be made to play in additional programs, like MX Player or VLC. You can install them, if you want, on Google Play.

Particular attention should be paid to the built-in photo editor, which received a lot of positive feedback from users. Considering all this, the phone Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL can be called a solid multimedia device at an affordable price.

Connectivity

Despite the fact that two-pin devices are popular recently, the ZE500CL does not belong to such devices - there is only one slot for one card. The phone is capable of receiving all major GSM signals, working in 2G / 3G / 4G networks.

In addition to these, there is also support for another standard set of communication capabilities: Bluetooth (for file sharing), GPS and GLONASS (for navigation), and, of course, WiFi connection support for high-speed wireless Internet connection.

Memory

We have already mentioned that the phone is available 8 or 16 GB of choice (information about this is contained in the name of the device, for example, Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL 16 GB). Also, as already mentioned, there is support for memory cards - up to 64 GB. The slot for installing the card is located under the back cover, so you can not count on the fact that you can easily get it to download new data. To do this, especially on the move, is not easy.

Accessories

Separately I would like to characterize a set of additions to the smartphone, making it more convenient to work with it. Not in vain because representatives of the company-developer have given the issue of accessories to the Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL 5 a significant fraction of the time of its presentation.

The first category is the body elements, in particular, the rear covers, which have a special, exclusive design. Due to the fact that they are painted in color with an iridescent hue, these covers are in demand among those who have already purchased a smartphone.

Of course, not without the means of protection for Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL LTE. So, the category covers includes interesting products series ViewFlipCover, which have an original round hole for viewing information about incoming calls and other updates on the smartphone screen.

Do not forget the developers and the autonomy, giving buyers the opportunity to get a portable battery ZenPower. Nothing original, in fact, he does not represent - except that the unique design from Asus in the form of a compact cube. The capacity of the device is 10500 mAh.

Finally, another interesting group of accessories were add-ons for creating images, or rather, portable flashes. They work through the port of the charging port, they feed, respectively, due to the battery of the phone. This flash is fixed to the back panel of the smartphone.

It should be clarified that all the listed accessories are original, developed by Asus, are presented together with the model at the time of its debut and therefore are now fully available in free sale.

Reviews

Recommendations on the smartphone because of its popularity is quite a lot. In general, of course, users praise the device, noting its advantages, described above. To them it is possible to carry, besides, low cost, attractive design, good quality of assembly of phone. Also included here are the efficient Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL processor, the characteristics of its memory, multimedia capabilities, battery and other elements. However, there were some negative comments.

In particular, some users complain about the insufficiently bright screen. Like, in sunny weather, work with the device is somewhat problematic, it's difficult to disassemble the small text, the display lets glare.

Another drawback is an insufficiently hardy battery. This problem we have already discussed above - it is that the manufacturer's declared characteristics do not correspond to what the device shows in practice. Obviously, one battery charge is not enough for a full day of working with a smartphone, and this gives a lot of inconvenience.

The authors of the reviews draw attention to the technical problems of the phone connection. For example, they can express themselves in the fact that the device does not recognize the inserted SIM card, or that the phone strangely loses the network. It is quite difficult to explain the nature of these problems, and in services they can not understand what is the reason.

Of course, apart from those mentioned, there are other minor flaws, such as a quiet sound in the headphones, lack of backlighting under the screen, the location of the display lock (for some users it seems not very convenient), and so on. Most of these assessments are subjective and can be assessed in different ways.

conclusions

Now that you've read our review, which features the Asus Zenfone 2 ZE500CL 16Gb smartphone, you can make your own conclusions. And our verdict is this: the company-developer managed to produce a really deserving model, which is not much inferior to this flagship. Probably, it really has problems with the battery charge, but this is compensated by the price of the phone and its functionality. Whether it is worth taking this device or not, it's up to you. But it should be said that already thousands of satisfied customers around the world made this choice, and judging by the comments, they were absolutely happy.