Asus ZenFone 3

Let me get this out of the way first: this is a phone with flaws. The software's not great, the build, while sturdy, gives the impression that it could shatter if so much as a snowflake lands on it, and the camera provides a less-than-ideal experience.

The reason I put that like it's a disclaimer is that I really like the Zenfone 3. As someone who's tried a lot of phones, it's really hard to find much to fault with the Zenfone 3. Now, if you're reading this from the U.S., you can stop reading now, because where you are there are much better phones out there for the price. Phones like the Moto Z Play and OnePlus 3, the former providing outstanding battery life, and the latter providing the fastest experience on any Android smartphone out there as of writing. Both have amazing software, amazing build, and both are extremely well-rounded devices. The Zenfone 3 has none of that if you live in the U.S., where it costs $400 USD, the same price as those other two.

But here in Canada, the Zenfone 3 provides a very different value assessment. Here - where smartphones are usually a lot more expensive than they are in the U.S. - it competes with phones like the Moto G4 Plus and Blackberry DTEK50 at a price of just $430 CAD. This levels the playing field somewhat, letting the ASUS Zenfone 3 compete with phones more its speed. With its Snapdragon 625 processor, 3/4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage, the ASUS Zenfone 3 handily beats out the competition on paper. In practice, though, things are a little more rough than that.

* The build quality is good, you can try to bend it without it flexing and it feels sturdy, but the glass back gives it the impression that you would be proven otherwise if you were to drop it.
* The camera is honestly pretty disappointing for me. Images turn out smudgy if you leave Auto HDR on, and the UI is pretty laggy. It's not bad, but I have to say it's not the best. One thing to note is that it does support RAW photo capture, but only through third-party apps.
* In everyday usage it's perfectly smooth. Only when gaming should you see a decrease in performance from a flagship, where the Adreno 506 GPU does hurt a bit.
* The display is pretty good, with one flaw: it ghosts terribly. This gives the illusion that the phone is less smooth than it is. It's a small thing, and something that probably only smartphone nerds like me would notice, but it's there.
* Battery life is pretty good too. 5-6 hours Screen on Time is usual for me with this phone with a mixture of gaming, web browsing and video streaming.
* The software is... divisive. I personally don't mind the ASUS-designed "ZenUI" skin, but it's certainly not very pretty to look at and it takes some time to get the unnecessary notifications to a minimum.

The only reason this phone doesn't get a higher score is because it's just not a very good deal - in the U.S., at least.

My unit is the 5.2 inch variant and all I can say is it's awesome. I'm using it for 2 weeks now and I've already got 3 software updates which improved the overall speed of the phone. A huge plus is that it's getting the Android 7 Nougat. I hope it will be updated until Android 8 or 9. Asus has done right with the zenfone 3. Totally recommended.