ASUS Zenfone 8 / 8 Flip: NOT what I was expecting! [Review] By Android Central

So today, ASUS has two new high-end phones for us, the before 8 and the before 8 flip. One is perhaps the best looking small android phone you can buy, and the other is a weird half-step upgrade. That leaves us waiting for a true successor to last year's before.7 pro take a sec to subscribe, so you don't have more reviews coming soon, and we'll jump right in contrary to what the name suggests. The vanilla, before 8, isn't the success to last year's before 7. Instead, it's a new small flagship phone that aims to bring the very best high-end phone tech to a smaller form factor. It's built around the very latest snapdragon 888 processors, with ram and storage configurations up to 16, gigabytes, plus 256 gigabytes.

It's got a 5.9 inch, 120 hertz screen coated with corning's the latest gorilla, glass Vitus and an apple 4000 William hour battery to power through a full day. So you get the idea. This is a premium smartphone from top to bottom, and that makes the 599 euro starting price. All the more impressive there isn't too much to look at here in terms of design, especially in the black model. I've been using the past few weeks.

It's got a frosted glass rear and anodized aluminum sidewalls, but aesthetically there's not much here. That's going to blow your mind, the more exciting thing for fans of small phones is that you've got a snapdragon 888 and a 120 hertz screen in a phone, that's around the same size as a pixel 5 and with pricing that still rivals that less powerful google phone, the before 8 flip, on the other hand, is more of a traditional member of the before family. Asus is keen to point out that it's the successor to the vanilla, before 7, not the 7 pro, as for when or if we'll get a before 8 pro. Who knows ASUS isn't commenting, but that's not what we have here today anyway, for the past two years, the before series has been defined by its unique flip cameras and once again, that's exactly what we've got here in the before 8 flip, in fact save for one or two minor downgrades to the camera which we'll get to later. The 8 flip is pretty much just a before 7 pro with an upgraded processor.

That means the handful of gripes that we had with the phone last year have unfortunately made it across to the new model, specifically no water resistance and no wireless charging for what it's worth. The regular before 8, which is really the focus of this release cycle for ASUS, is rated ip68 to protect it from both splashes and submersion, and that model also comes with a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack, which I don't particularly care about, but I know a lot of other people do so honestly. The flip isn't the most exciting phone, given that it very closely mirrors a device. That's been on the market for more than nine months. Already aside from a few changes to the color and branding and, of course, the step-up to a snapdragon 888, the internals are largely the same as the before 7 pro, but the hardware does still hold up in 2021.

There's a large 6.67 inch, full HD plus AMOLED panel running at 90 hertz, which is expansive and also uninterrupted by notches or hole punches and the large 5 000 million power battery ranks among the largest you'll find in any mainstream phone in day-to-day use. I found the before 8 flip, largely matched the strong battery life that I saw from the 7 pro last year and in some cases, actually exceeded it. Six hours of screen on time was definitely doable, and you really have to push this phone with constant photography to kill off in under a day. The same also applies to the regular before 8, which has a smaller cell at 4 000 William hours, but also a less expansive display. I could easily get a full day's use out of that phone as well with around five and a half hours of screen on time in terms of photography.

That, of course, is a big focus of both phones, the before 8 flip recreates, the camera setup of the 7 pro with a 64 megapixel, mix 686 behind the main camera. Only this time without optical stabilization, your ultrawide is the same 12 megapixel mix 363, which is the main shooter from the Google Pixel 5 and there's also an 8 megapixel three times telephoto. What's also really useful, is the ability to manually rotate the camera to any angle between front facing or rear facing at a 90-degree angle, the before's flip camera is the ideal shooter for taking pictures of kids or pets from a lower vantage point, and this feature also works with third-party camera apps thanks to ASUS's floating camera widget. So, once again because of the before's unique flip camera assembly, which is rated for 150 flips per day for 5 years, all of these cameras can also be used to take selfies and that's arguably, the before 8 flips biggest selling point no need to settle for an inferior, front-facing camera behind a notch or hole punch simply take great selfies by flipping over the main camera array. All three cameras hold up pretty well whether they're facing front or back with natural colors plenty of fine detail and a slight grain to photos up close similar to Google's pixel photo aesthetic, though obviously you'll get slightly worse low-light performance compared to the before 7 pro because of the lack of is over on the regular before 8.

You get the same ultra-wide camera and an mix 686 for the primary shooter. Only this time with optical stabilization, meaning clearer, brighter shots in low light. The big disappointment for the before 8 is, of course, the lack of telephoto zoom, meaning you're limited to digital crops. From that 64 megapixel sensor, at least the relatively high resolution does mean you've got some wiggle room to crop down without losing too much detail and around the front. The before 8 has a traditional hole, punch selfie camera, but with a new mix 663 sensors, it's the first phone to use this sensor, and it should help to capture sharper selfies thanks to its use of autofocus.

The front-facing camera is the only blemish in one of the best displays you'll find in a compact android phone. The 120 hertz refresh rate beats the likes of the pixel 5 in terms of smoothness, and the 1100 nits of peak brightness helps to retain readability even in bright ambient light. My only slight disappointment, having used the pixel 5 for most of the year so far, is that ASUS phone screen sports slightly chunkier bezels than Google's, especially in the chin area down below. Otherwise, though this is a great little screen, audio is also impressive across both devices, particularly in the vanilla before 8. In casual testing.

The before speaker came close to matching the maximum volume of the much larger galaxy s21 ultra and sounded a little clearer than that phone with the volume maxed out. That's all the more impressive considering it's very compact size. What's also impressive is ASUS's clean fast software ASUS has established its renew as a fast performant version of android with helpful software additions peppered throughout the UI and version 8 of the software doesn't change up too much compared to previous iterations there's, basically, nothing in the way of preloaded bloatware and, as I've said in previous reviews, ASUS software just gets out of the way and, as a result is a delight to use that doesn't mean the before 8 is lacking in features, though the built-in game genie mode borrowed from the ROG phone series lets you record games, suppress notifications and lock the brightness and refresh rates during play sessions. Among many other gaming features, plus there's a nifty one-handed mode borrowed from android 12, which functions exactly as it does in the current android 12 previews. The latest renew is also more customizable, with tweakable accent, colors icon, styles and fonts, and the always-on display can be tweaked with new clock styles and scheduled to display only during certain hours.

So you get the idea. This is pretty much the closest you can get to pure android in software. That doesn't come straight from Google, some other odds and ends to mention before we wrap up both phones, ship with a 30 watt, USB pd charger and while 30 watt charging isn't the fastest we've seen on the market, it's definitely still within the realms of fast charging and particularly for the small before 8. It's at the level where you can plug it in go, take a shower, and you'll be guaranteed to be out of the danger zone by the time you check it. Next, both before 8 models also feature optical in-screen fingerprints, which works about and it does on rival.

Phones like the OnePlus 9. , but there's a bit of a problem, though, with these new phones, ASUS is kind of stuck in a branding quagmire of its own creation. The vanilla, before 8 is an entirely new and smaller phone, not a successor to the before 7, while the before 8 flip is the follow-up to last year's before 7, just not the 7 pro. So by comparison, it seems a little underwhelming compared to last year's ASUS flagship, ultimately, with the flip. What you have is a before 7 pro with an upgraded processor, a very slightly downgraded camera at the same launch price as last year's flagship phone again, that sounds fairly underwhelming when the 7 pro itself is now available for considerably less.

The regular before 8, though, represents a new class of device from ASUS and one of the real highlights of the admittedly sparse compact android flagship space, ASUS hasn't skimped on specs or other features to fit the before 8 into its diminutive form factor, and it feels and performs like a fully fledged high-end android phone. Only real disappointments are the lack of wireless charging and the limited breadth of VoLTE and Wi-Fi calling supports on certain carriers given ASUS's lack of clout in that department plus, the speed of OS updates is also a bit of a concern given ASUS's track record in that area. Nevertheless, the before 8 is a fantastic little phone and worth a look. If you want titanic performance in a more pocketable package, the a-flip, on the other hand, is a bit of a harder sell selling for a hundred dollars more than the still great before 7 pro. Nevertheless, if you want a fantastic flip, camera ASUS remains the only game in town.

That's it for now be sure to subscribe, so you don't miss more reviews like this one coming soon. In the meantime, thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.

Source : Android Central