Display and Touch
The Zenfone 2 features a 5.5-inch IPS LCD display with 1920×1080 resolution (408 ppi), and it looks excellent. ASUS points out that this phone's design offers a 5.5-inch display in the body of a typical 5-inch device, and the 72% screen-to-body ratio does translate into a larger-screened device that is surprisingly easy to hold and use with one hand.
The Zenfone 2 produces very sharp text and good color from its IPS LCD panel, which I left in the default "balanced" mode. There are three different viewing modes (vivid, reading, and balanced) to choose from, and you can customize the color saturation and hue to fine tune the screen to your liking. When compared to an AMOLED phone display then Zenfone 2 does look washed out and considerably less vivid, but pentile pattern screens such as the AMOLED panel in the Nexus 6 are providing greater vibrance with less accurate color overall. Of course in the end it will be a matter of personal preference as to which looks better.
To give a quick example of the out-of-box difference between an AMOLED and IPS display here's the Nexus 6 (top) vs. the Zenfone 2 (bottom) displaying the same image, both phones set to 50% brightness.
Nexus 6 (top) exhibits greater contrast and saturation compared to Zenfone 2 (bottom)
While the Nexus certainly offers more "pop" which will appeal to many people, it is interesting to see how these displays compare when measured for accuracy.
Color Accuracy
Zenfone 2 CIE Diagram (white outline)
Testing the display using a Spyder4Pro colorimeter with HCFR show a fairly accurate result (RGB result is the white outline). The display does look slightly cool, though color is considerably more accurate than most AMOLED panels, an inherent advantage of the IPS technology (which has a red, green, and blue sub-pixel pattern for each display pixel). This difference is obvious when looking at the Nexus 6 result:
Nexus 6 CIE Diagram (white outline)
Here we see the huge exaggeration of green reproduction with the pentile display in the Nexus 6, and an overall slightly oversaturated result. The biggest advantage of AMOLED is the unbeatable black level performance, which is essentially 0% light output as the subpixels are producing the light (there is no LED backlight with this technology). I have found the inaccurate color from most AMOLED screens to be less significant in daily use as my eyes adjusted to the green level, though I find pentile to provide less clarity with fine text, even at higher resolution. In any case the IPS panel in the Zenfone 2 provided crisp text with a screen that was very sharp without any edge enhancement evident.
Overall the Zenfone 2 is one of the better IPS displays I've seen on an Android phone, though not quite up to the quality of an iPhone panel. Still, we're talking about the display on a phone you can buy for $199 (both models use the same screen), which is really amazing compared to what most budget phones have to offer.
Digitizer
Just as important as the display quality is the touchscreen, and in this case we have an outstanding digitizer implementation that rivals the best I’ve ever used (iPhone). With sensitivity and precision as high as it was with this Zenfone 2, it feels like there must have been some hardware optimization done at the OS level – and that’s a very good thing. ASUS lists the response time for touch input as 60 ms, and in my use it was very responsive – significantly better than the Nexus 6, which is my daily driver.
Not only did touch seem to respond instantaneously, but it handled speed and acceleration extremely well – so much so that after the Zenfone my Nexus 6 felt downright sluggish.
Touchcreen Gestures
One of the biggest changes from the stock android experience I'm used to from my Nexus 6 came via gestures, and the Zenfone 2 offers several gestures including different ways to wake and sleep the phone. This helped mitigate the problem with the hardware sleep/wake button, which is rather inconveniently located on the top center, difficult to reach one-handed. However after a couple of days with the phone I completely stopped using this button as it was easier to simply tap the screen instead.
Two taps on the screen will awaken the Zenfone and two more on the status bar at the top of the screen will put it to sleep again. It became second nature to operate the phone this way after a couple of weeks, and I later found myself trying to do it with my Nexus 6 (to no avail).
Oh boy, now I can destroy my
Oh boy, now I can destroy my privacy for only $200! Thanks Pcper for letting me know about this amazing opportunity!
nobody cares about you so
nobody cares about you so your privacy is safe
Hi Sebastian,
thank you for
Hi Sebastian,
thank you for the detailed review! You might want to add that $199 model also supports Quick Charge technology, but doesn’t come with the Quick Charge adapter in the box.
Question, did you have a chance to use lower specs model (2GB/16GB Z5360 CPU)? I understand that it slower then $299 one, but how does it feel/respond during Lollipop normal usage?
Thank you!
Thanks, and the BoostMaster
Thanks, and the BoostMaster compatibilty is an important distinction. I didn't personally test the 16GB version with the Z3560, as the sample I was using was the $299 model. Given the way the SoCs are optimized I don't think there would be a significant UI/UX difference, but there's an obvious performance difference from our benchmarks in certain applications.
The best thing about this SOC
The best thing about this SOC is that it is not using Intel Graphics, so expect much better graphics from a GPU with the execution resources to do the JOB. I just wish that M$ could persuade Intel to use even higher end powerVR graphics and make a surface tablet useful for graphics uses. I hear that Intel is moving away from PowerVR to Mali graphics, but as long as its not Intel’s graphics.
Thank you Sebastian. I
Thank you Sebastian. I ordered $199 model for my dad and it should be here next week. It will be his first Android phone coming from candy-bar Nokia, so we’ll see how it’s going to be. But I didn’t feel he would need the higher spec mode and quick charger and microSDXC 64Gb card is around $40 from Amazon.
If Ryan was testing Z5360 model, could you ask him to chime in the comments with his experience of it?
Too bad that camera seems to be lacking a bit for daylight shots, though it seems that Asus releases firmware updates every couple weeks for this phone, so may be things will get better. If I like what I see, I might get myself a $299 one later this summer.Thanks again for the review!
I used the model with the
I used the model with the lower end processor but I will say that the experience and fluidity of the unit was just as Sebastian described in the review. It was smooth and I didn't know any performance penalties of the lower cost model even when I had both phones in my possession at the same time.
That’s good to know, thank
That’s good to know, thank you Ryan. I enjoy your site a lot and listen to the podcast on weekly basis. That’s actually how I remembered about ZenFone2 (even though I saw CES presentation about it), when Sebastian had as his pick couple weeks ago. Keep up a good work and thanks again!
Any chance you could find out
Any chance you could find out which benchmarks are x86 compiled and which ones are running ARM via translation layer? Or did you mention it and I missed it?
That’s a great question. I
That’s a great question. I need to do some research as I’m not sure off hand. The difference in performance in some of the benchmarks could easily be explained based on native/non-native code, though in the real world I do think it’s fair to judge it as-is considering one does have the option of downloading x86 apps from the Play store (not that devs would offer it at this point anyway).
bad.
bad.
Ryan..I really want to win
Ryan..I really want to win that car! It’s being given away on the next podcast I hear!
It has two 980ti’s installed
It has two 980ti’s installed as well I hear.
I would have guessed a pair
I would have guessed a pair of TITAN Z’s for the car. Gotta have that double precision for better handling