The most-awaited, new Zenfone, with optical zoom, has been launched in the Philippines during the Sinulog Festival in Cebu City on January 16, 2016.
We have actual photos of the Zenfone Zoom below.
ASUS is bringing one variant only, the 128G with options to replace the back cover. Interestingly, Asus also included a hand strap to secure the Zenfone Zoom while you are shooting with it.
And here’s the Zenfone Zoom in the flesh.
The price of P26,995 must be justified with the premium finish. The back has faux leather, which is again, is replaceable with different colors. Asus display two (2) more colors — orange and white.
The intel logo is also printed in the upper right near the audio jack of the Zenfone Zoom. At the bottom is the Asus logo. The super huge camera, the 13-megapixel with Hoya 3x optical zoom reminds me of the Lumia 1020.
As mention in my previous article, the Zenfone Zoom has a dedicated camera shutter and a video record button. Zooming to your subject can be obtained by pinching the screen or by using the volume control.
The software the UI are seemingly familiar if you are a Zenfone user already. It comes with Android 5.0 Lollipop with the Zen UI on top of it. The usual bunch of Asus apps are present and pre-installed once more, but I guess you can forgive them already because of the generous storage of 128G. Plus you can still add more via the microSD slot.
There are pretty much awesome camera features like optical image stabilization (OIS). A super close macro feature that lets you get closer to the subject at 5cm.
Asus Zenfone Zoom unboxing video
Asus ZenFone Zoom specs
Android 5.0 Lollipop with ASUS Zen UI
5.5 inch IPS LCD display (1920×1080 pixels), 401ppi
Corning Gorilla Glass 4
2.33GHz Quad-core Intel Atom Z3580 64bit processor
Intel HD Graphics 533 MHz
4GBRAM
128GB internal storage. expandable up to 128GB via Micro SD card
LTE Cat. 4 150Mbps
Single SIM
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 4.0
13MP rear camera, Dual Color Real Tone Flash, 3x optical-zoom
5MP front-facing camera
GPS with aGPS support
185 g (with battery)
3,000mAh non-removable Li-po battery
Asus Zenfone Zoom price and availability
Asus Zenfone official price in the Philippines is P26,995. It will arrive within a few weeks from the launch in Cebu on January 16, 2016.
