Asus ZenFone 6 Review

I must admit that it has been a few years since I last used an Asus phone as a daily driver, and clearly, the company's vision for software has changed a lot since then. Gone is the bloat. Gone are the gimmicks. Instead, ZenUI 6 running on the Asus ZenFone 6 doesn't stray far from the pure Android 9 Pie experience. It even adopts features like Digital Wellbeing, Google's Adaptive Brightness, and the Night Light blue light filter. The phone will be updated to Android R, its maker promises.

To be clear, Asus has tweaked the interface quite a bit, but the changes do make sense. Optimizations to the Android framework have been made to make apps launch faster, and the memory management algorithms are designed to keep frequently used apps longer in memory so that you can switch to them more quickly. Overall, this is a really fast phone, although I do feel like a Pixel 3 is more fluid, and I have noticed that when switching to a recently used app, it could take a split second for it to start responding to touch input.

Visually, certain elements have been rearranged to make single-handed use less of a challenge. Dialog windows, for example, appear at the bottom of the screen, not in the middle. There's also a dark mode, but its purpose is mainly to make the screen put less of a strain on your eyes at night. Since the ZenFone 6 uses an LCD display and not an OLED one, battery life won't be affected. Besides, it only affects UI elements like the app drawer and the quick controls. It doesn't work in apps like Facebook or Instagram.

Smart Key

There's an extra physical button on the side of the Asus ZenFone 6. It's called the Smart Key and its main purpose is to launch the Google Assistant when you need it, even from the lock screen. But it can be set to perform other actions. Personally, I have it set to cycle between Ring, Vibrate, and Mute modes with a single press. A double press enables the flashlight, and holding the button down takes a screenshot. Overall, I appreciate having the Smart Key and I do use it daily, but unfortunately, you can't set the button to launch an app of your choice.

Processor and memory

The Asus ZenFone 6 comes with the Snapdragon 855, just like most other Android high-ends. It is the fastest chip Qualcomm has to offer, and to no surprise, I've had no troubles playing heavy games. Our particular review unit comes with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, but versions with 6GB of RAM and 64 or 128GB of storage will be available as well. For those who need it, there's a dedicated microSD card slot in addition to the dual SIM slots. In other words, you may have two SIMs in there and enjoy expandable storage at the same time.

Camera

There are two cameras on the Asus ZenFone 6, both mounted on the phone's flippy module. One is a regular 48MP camera for every-day use, and it uses the same Sony IMX586 sensor we've seen on many other similarly priced phones. The high resolution isn't this sensor's only strength. Its large area allows it to absorb more light than smaller sensors, while at night, visual information from four pixels is combined together for greater clarity. One of its weaknesses is the lack of OIS.
 
The second camera has a wide-angle fixed-focus lens, and it is very useful when you need to capture more in the frame without stepping back. Alas, the camera has its drawbacks. Since it isn't as sensitive to light as the main cam, its low-light photos lack detail, and the properties of the lens introduce noticeable distortion that makes the images appear stretched near the edges.

Despite the main camera's promising specs, the results are a mixed bag, and this could be greatly due to Asus's camera algorithms. There's an HDR+ mode which activates automatically when needed, and while it produces outstanding images in some cases, other scenes look flat and artificial. This tends to be the case in gloomy weather. Under artificial lighting, the camera may struggle with setting the correct white balance. Due to the lack of OIS, I see motion blur in images more often than I'm used to, mainly in low-light shots.

In the camera app you'll find a mode called HDR+ Enhanced. The HDR photos it produces tend to have more contrast and look less artificial, but using the mode requires you to hold the camera still for several seconds as multiple exposures are being captured. This is why I rarely used it. Asus has also thrown in a Night Mode that works in a similar fashion, by capturing several exposures over a few seconds. It is not as impressive as Google's Night Sight, but it works well. Its main benefit is that it tames the highlights that might have otherwise come out overblown.

By the way, the ZenFone 6 takes 12MP photos by default. You have the freedom to shoot at 48MP of resolution, but while you do really get more detail, this slows down the camera significantly, disables the HDR+ feature, and produces very large files. In terms of detail, the 12MP photos that I've taken so far are comparable to those from the Galaxy S10, but only as long as there's not too much movement in the frame.


The ZenFone 6 shoots up to 4K 60fps video, and the produced footage looks very detailed. The stabilization is done in software and works well, even though it doesn't show in the viewfinder. On the downside, the stabilization algorithms need to crop a substantial amount of the frame to do their thing effectively. I also need to mention that 4K video recording is limited to 10 minutes, and you can't switch between cameras once you've started shooting.