The latest budget Android smartphone from Asus is the Zenfone Live that lets you ‘beautify’ with the hardware-optimised live streaming beautification technology. It works on live videos on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.
The Zenfone Live carries the design language of other Android smartphones in this price segment but, is quite lightweight at 120 grams. This phone does not feature Asus’ trademark concentric circle pattern barring the power key and volume buttons.
The Asus Zenfone Live has a speaker grille at the bottom and the camera is positioned at the top left. The top of the device houses one of the antenna bands. Asus branding is at the rear. The Dual-SIM tray (hybrid) is on the left side that accepts micro SIM + nano SIM or a microSD card.
The Zenfone Live sports a 5-inch 720p HD display with 2.5D glass. This is a unibody smartphone.
Is this phone worth considering in the budget segment? Read our review to find out.
What makes the Zenfone Live different is its light and slim form factor. The display is pretty bright and vivid. Asus allows users to tweak the colour tones according to their preference. Colour tones can be customised in the display settings.
The Zenfone Live is a very handy smartphone, thanks to its slim form factor (8-mm thick) and light weight. It is perfect for one handed use. Even people with small hands would not find it much difficult to operate it with one hand.
The 2.5D curved glass on the front renders a seamless feel, which gets a thumbs-up from our side.
The smartphone handled day-to-day activities with ease. There were no significant lags while browsing internet, watching videos and chatting.
The device offers decent battery life that can be attributed to a power-efficient chipset on board. Additionally, Asus Zenfone Live has a power-saving features with four modes: normal, performance, power saving and super saving.
Talking about the high point of the smartphone – the live beautification mode – it does not make the Zenfone Live stand out amid a sea of Android smartphones out there.
In fact, the real-time beautification mode brightens the skin and adds a little blush but that is not a value-addition. It makes skin tones look artificial and quite washed out. The 5-megapixel front snapper could be blamed for the average-looking selfies and live videos.
The Zenfone Live does not feature a fingerprint sensor, which is a big disappointment given the price. Xiaomi’s Redmi 4 comes with a fingerprint scanner and a bigger battery at a lower price (of Rs 6,999 for 2GB RAM and 16GB ROM) version.
Browsing on more than three tabs on Chrome showed lags. There were no heating issues, though.
A black border runs through the sides of the phone and makes it look rather odd.
Performace could have been better but we cannot complain much when a Snapdragon 400 chipset is on board.
We also missed the trademark Asus chin with concentric circles.
Asus Zenfone Live is handy and lightweight smartphone. It is good for only those who are tempted with the idea of going live on YouTube or Facebook. Having said that, the live beautification feature is not much of a value addition to a Rs 10K Android smartphone.
