Is the ZenFone 6’s pop-up camera more than just a party trick?
Asus ditches the notch once and for all, but the ZenFone 6’s curious camera system might not be the answer
SCORE ★★★★★ PRICE £416 (£499 inc VAT) from asus.com
The quest for a 100% full-screen smartphone has turned into a troublesome journey. That pesky selfie camera and earpiece speaker keep getting in the way of the austere, minimalist frontage we so desperately crave.
There’s no shortage of attempts to solve the problem. Screen notches, vibrating displays and pop-up cameras have all been put forward, but often these introduce their own set of problems.
Asus, however, has a new approach. The ZenFone 6 tackles the problem by ditching the selfie camera altogether, with the rear-mounted camera unit rotating towards the front of the phone instead.
Back to normal
Let’s start with the “normal” stuff first. The ZenFone 6 is Asus’ flagship phone for 2019 and, aside from that curious camera, everything else is typical smartphone fare.
The phone is constructed from a single block of aluminium, sits nicely in the hand and feels just as special to hold as any other flagship. Mind you, the ZenFone 6 can be picked up only in boring black or silver colour schemes at launch, and it doesn’t benefit from the same shimmering, reflective two-tone rear as the Huawei P30 ( see issue 297, p71) or Samsung Galaxy S10e ( see issue 298, p75).
There’s nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to the phone’s physical layout, either. The power key, Google Assistant button and volume rocker sit on the right edge of the phone, with a USB-C charging port sensibly placed on the bottom. Rather than following the trend for in-screen sensors, Asus has opted for a rear-mounted fingerprint reader, which is placed just above the middle of the phone.
It’s also worth noting the trio of slots on offer here, because – unusually – you can slip in two SIMs and a microSD card up to 2TB. Most phones offer two slots, the second of which can normally be used for either a SIM or a microSD card. Asus includes a 3.5mm audio jack, too.
Unsurprisingly, the ZenFone 6 runs the latest version of Android, with Asus’ own ZenUI 6 software overlay plastered on top. Much like Google’s Pixel launcher, this keeps the stock Android look with only a few minor tweaks.
Some of these unique features are quite handy. A system-wide dark mode can be enabled in the settings, while you can swipe down on the rear-mounted fingerprint reader to access the notification drawer. Double-tapping the display wakes the phone and the ZenFone 6 can also automatically adjust speaker volume based on surrounding noise levels.
Dominant display
The ZenFone 6’s front dominates your first impressions, with a whopping 6.4in IPS display. While a resolution of 2,340 x 1,080 is nothing special, support for the HDR 10 standard is. This means it’s capable of producing a wide range of colours, with brighter whites and a deep, inky-looking black. HDR-enriched content on Netflix looks particularly strong.
When placed under the scrutiny of our screen calibrator, we found the ZenFone 6’s IPS panel was capable of delivering 87% of the sRGB colour gamut on the phone’s “standard” display mode, with an average Delta E of 2.27. Colours looked neutral and
“It’s faster than previousgeneration handsets, providing similar levels of performance to rivals using the most up-to-date silicon”
accurate, with only dark red tones ebbing into slight oversaturation.
It’s a great-quality display in other departments, too. A contrast ratio of 1,158:1 is welcome, while the peak brightness of 549cd/m2 is good enough to stop you squinting at your Facebook feed as the summer sun approaches. Just watch out when you don your polarised sunglasses; the phone’s polarising filter, which reduces glare in direct sunlight, will make it difficult to see the screen while you have them on.
Turn of pace
The ZenFone 6 is powered by Qualcomm’s most powerful chipset, the Snapdragon 855. This is an octa-core processor clocked at 2.84GHz, and built using a more efficient 7nm fabrication process, so it promises vastly improved speeds over 2018’s ZenFone 5Z. This is backed by up to 8GB of RAM and a generous 128GB or 256GB of expandable storage.
In benchmarks, the ZenFone 6 is faster than previous-generation handsets, providing similar levels of performance to most rivals using the most up-to-date silicon. The Geekbench 4 single and multicore CPU tests recorded results of 3,529 and 11,131, which suggests that little else outside of Apple’s A12 Bionicfitted iPhones could perform better.
Gaming performance is equally worthy, with the ZenFone 6 reaching
the maximum frame rate of 60fps in the GFXBench Manhattan 3 onscreen test. According to the GameBench screen-monitoring software, the ZenFone 6 also delivered a rock-solid frame rate of 40fps in PUBG Mobile at the highest visual quality.
Perhaps even more impressive, however, is the ZenFone 6’s stamina. With a 5,000mAh capacity, it has the largest battery we’ve seen in a flagship in quite some time and that translates to long-lasting stints away from the wall socket. Our video rundown test recorded a total result of 22hrs 37mins before the Asus ZenFone 6 needed a recharge. Of its rivals, only the Xiaomi Mi 9 has lasted longer.
Note that Asus bundles an 18W charger, and with support for Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 4 standard, you can give it a splash and dash if necessary or charge it from zero to full in around two hours. There’s no wireless charging, though.
Dual-use camera
Finally to the ZenFone 6’s unique selling point. With no selfie camera embedded into the front of the phone, how exactly will you capture all those Instagram vanity shots?
Well, Asus gets around this predicament by including a bizarre, movable camera. Simply open the camera app and tap the selfie button, or ask Google Assistant to take a selfie. This rapidly spins the camera on its axis 180 degrees. It’s as simple as that. One extra nice touch is that you can adjust the angle however you see fit using the manual controls in the camera app.
This also allows for automatic vertical and horizontal panoramic photography, with the camera steadily moving upwards without having to move the phone itself. And it means you can use all the advanced shooting modes that are normally jettisoned on front cameras, such as time-lapse, night shot and wide-angle photography. Plus there’s 4K video recording at 60fps with electronic image stabilisation enabled.
Asus says the camera mechanism has been tested for more than 100,000 uses, which is supposedly the same as using the selfie camera 28 times a day, every day, for five years. It also has drop protection, retracting back into its hole if it identifies that the phone has fallen out of your hand.
In terms of specifications, the camera incorporates a 48-megapixel Sony IMX586 sensor with a relatively wide f/1.8 aperture. We’ve previously seen this highmegapixel camera unit in the Xiaomi Mi 9 ( see issue 296, p72) and OnePlus 7 Pro ( see issue 298, p70). Here it works in tandem with a secondary, 13-megapixel camera, featuring a wide-angle, 125-degree sensor.
Like the OnePlus 7 Pro, the ZenFone 6 captures 12-megapixel images by default, rather than the maximum 48 megapixels. This may seem odd – note you’ll have to dig into the fiddly camera settings to increase the resolution – but in reality it’s a good thing because 12-megapixel images look significantly better.
The 48-megapixel camera appears to suffer from a particularly aggressive noise reduction algorithm, which is a problem we’ve previously identified with both the OnePlus 7 Pro and Honor 20 Pro. To generalise, images looked smeary, as if someone had brushed over them with an egg wash. And low-light pictures are dramatically overexposed.
Thankfully, as long as you stay away from the odd-looking 48-megapixel mode, pictures look good in normal lighting. The 12-megapixel setting manages to capture plenty of detail, with sharp, clean-looking images and a pleasingly neutral colour palette. The level of detail doesn’t match the Xiaomi Mi 9, but these are shots you’ll be proud to share.
Photos in low light aren’t quite as good. While the night mode does a decent job of accentuating finer details and brightening up the image, there’s still a noticeable amount of visual noise and telltale signs of compression artifacting. On the other hand, the secondary wideangle camera does a great job of capturing people-packed selfies.
Buying decision
Asus provides two versions of the ZenFone 6. The entry-level specification, which we tested, comes with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. That will set you back £499, which is a competitive price when rivals such as OnePlus are now pushing up their prices. The 8GB/256GB version costs another £100, but even that undercuts the ZenFone 6’s competition. For these prices, at this spec, Asus’ only rival is Xiaomi’s Mi 9, which also costs £499 and comes with the same internal spec, an AMOLED display and a superb rear camera arrangement. In the ZenFone 6’s corner: an HDR 10 screen, huge battery and that odd rotatable camera (which has its advantages). Is this where notch-less phones are headed? Probably not, but there’s a heck of a lot more on offer here than a spinning camera. Asus’ latest smartphone is its best yet, successfully providing a sublime, well-rounded package for a competitive price.
SPECIFICATIONS
Octa-core 2.84GHz/2.42GHz/1.8GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 6GB RAM Adreno 640 graphics 6.4in IPS screen, 1,080 x 2,340 resolution 128GB storage dual SIM microSD slot dual 48MP/13MP rotatable cameras 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 NFC 3.5mm audio jack USB-C connector 5,000mAh battery Android 9 75.4 x 9.1 x 159mm (WDH) 190g 1yr warranty