Zenfone 8 Flip Review & why I returned it after 5 days By Sherman Chin

Hi everyone Sherman here today and I'm going to tell you about the ASUS before 8 flip, which I have for about uh five days now. I've been using for five days now and if you have been following my channel, you will know that I have had problems with it and that's why I'm returning it so the main problem I have with it is that it shuts down and doesn't power up again after I uh shut it down. So if sometimes it happens, so it happened twice already I shut it down, and then it doesn't power up. I have to press all three buttons here: the volume up volume down and the power key to start it back up again. So I'm not going to demonstrate to you because I don't know if it's going to start again. One time I did it, I've had to press all three buttons, and then it just started by itself.

One time he went to the power up, uh boot menu. So I had to choose to power up right, and I'm not going to show that to you today, but I just wanted you guys to know. That's one of the main reasons why I'm returning it and the shop where I bought it from it's called thunder match. It was so kind as to allow me to return it and just before that. What I did was that I tested it to see if I want to buy it again from them, because I really do like this phone, despite what I'm saying uh despite its downfalls uh, but I'm going to give you a like an honest review of it since I've been using it for five days now, as my daily driver, and I'm going to tell you guys, like the things I don't like about it first.

So the first thing I really don't like about it is uh. This fingerprint scanner on the before 7 pro it used to be on the side where this power button is- and I think that uh that is the perfect place to have it, because you know it's much easier to just pull it with the power button and turn it on now with the uh. With this on the screen itself, which is the see I have to get it like that, and then I try to get it to recognize my finger, and sometimes it doesn't even do it, and it has this really white light. That's so annoying, especially when I use it in the dark room. It just like blinds me right because of the white light, so it takes some time.

Sometimes it just doesn't detect, and sometimes it detects and when it does detect your finger, it takes some time to actually open the screen. If not, you have to enter your password so like, after maybe I think five times of entering the wrong uh the wrong. I mean, if you, if it doesn't, detect your fingerprint properly, then after five times you have to enter your password. So the next thing is uh. It does have this problem with the screen, where I noticed that if you switch it to a really low like uh lightning like the brightness at the lowest level, you will actually see here.

I have a screenshot of YouTube. You will see that uh when I'm actually viewing it in the dark. You'll see that one side is actually darker. I don't know whether that is uh. The black crush issue that the ROG phone tree had, but at first I thought it was, but it was only visible at night when it's really dark, and you'll see like it's not perfectly black.

There is a like a more white towards the right, the left side and then towards the right side of the screen. It's darker, so it is just gives you a bit of a headache at night when you're viewing it in the in complete darkness. But I understand that not everybody does that, but don't view the screen in complete darkness, and I only did it like uh like a couple of times. So it's not something that will be that bad for you um. But what would be that bad for you, this phone as the camera system? Unfortunately, this is the main gripe I had with this phone.

It's its supposed to be seen that flip up thing, flippy! You can control it with the up and down volume button. So if you go down it just goes down, you can adjust it and see, and you get different angles. It's all pretty cool, but you know what they say. You can use it as sort of like a tripod, but you're not going to put it like this, because you can't see the screen anyway, so um, it's kind of pointless, and I discovered that if you move it around a lot while you're doing your video recording or you if you change the lens, it's going to stutter and stutter by what I mean by stutter, is that the thing would be jerky, and they will just hang, and you will see the video hang. So if I'm going to link the videos down below I'm sure some of you who have already subscribed to my channel have seen it uh.

You see the videos hang while I'm filming it, so it's really, really annoying at first, I didn't know what was the cause, and then I thought about it. I was actually trying to use a different camera, the white anger, camera and the main camera, which is a 64 megapixel one. But the white camera has a better feel of you. It doesn't matter whether you're using 8k doesn't matter whether you're using 4k. It all has this problem.

If you start to zoom in and zoom out, and you mess with it, it's going to stutter and cause problems. I don't know whether this is solved in the latest update. I actually got the update today. Furthermore, I haven't tested it yet, so it might be soft and if it's soft, then it's a good thing. Furthermore, I hope ASUS solves it, but I would say that that's one of the major issues.

Furthermore, I got this phone for vlogging, and it's just not that great for vlogging. If you look at my videos, I'm going to link them down below again. It just doesn't look as clear as it should for 8k video or even the 4k video or the 1080p video. It's just not very clear for some odd reason. I'm filming now on my Samsung Galaxy note 9, and I think the quality is almost the same.

If you look at it, it's uh. I have no idea why, because this phone is supposed to be like using its, you know that awesome, 8k, 64, megapixel camera and the Samsung Galaxy note 9. I can't even remember I think it's like 12 megapixels, so it's not great but again like they say it's not about megapixels and, of course, uh. Furthermore, I'm not talking about photos. This phone is great right, uh, they have even worn the MHD's blind photo award last year.

I think what is the before 7 pro and speaking of the before 7 pro? This is very similar. It has the same setup as the before 7 pro, except that the zen phone it flipped doesn't have optical image stabilization. I have no idea why so using the electronic image stabilization, I thought the software would be good enough to you know to stabilize it, but when I did the video again I've linked it below where there's a light shining from the window behind me, it just makes everything really blurry, so it can't differentiate my face. Like I mean it can't differentiate my face, it's just that it just makes everything really bright and blurry. So um, I'm guessing that's because there's no optical image, stabilization and the software has to compensate with electronic image stabilization and that causes the problem.

So it's just my guess, but uh. That's the issue that I faced with this phone again, like I said actors might actually be having uh. You know some fixes for it with the updates uh. Another thing is when I play games with this phone, so I play mobile legends. It's just really great.

The sound system is actually really great, but I would say that when you play it, you're going to touch the back camera a lot. So it's going to be very messy like dirty after a while, because you know you're sweating, and you play this game right and when you want to do something like uh like streaming, the video. You can't really do it, because this thing will be coming out, and it's blocking your hand. You can't really game. I tried it once, but it just ended up like awful, so it just doesn't make sense if you want to do streaming, and you can actually do it with this software with uh.

Let me just show you guys: it's called easy screen recorder. You can get the camera to pop up to show your face while you are playing a game, but again it's going to be in your way. So it's not ideal and you can. I actually link I'm going to link it below the video like that. You can see.

I mean like it's possible like it has a front review, but even my Samsung Galaxy note 9. Does it and uh I'd say you don't really need that great uh image of yourself when you're playing a game so, and it said that they didn't even include it in the uh. You know there's a software for it. I forgot to name, but it's called game crate or something like that game, genie or game genie. So uh, it's the same one, the ROG 5, but it's very limited.

They actually cut down the features. There's no direct charging where you bypass the battery the feature is not there. Maybe they will implement it later. I don't know, but apparently the before 7 pro has that, because I was reading that it has that and um one more bad thing. If you are playing games like if you play games like mobile legends, don't expect this to last a day the battery drains really quickly uh.

It doesn't make much sense to me because it drains as fast as say my Samsung Galaxy note 9, which uses uh. You know I think it was four thousand milliampere battery or even less than that, but this one uses five thousand milliampere um and the battery drains really quickly. So I tried setting it to 60, hertz and uh with the lower settings and everything, and it still just drains really quickly as well. So again it might be updated in software. So you know it.

Could it might not be the no and b all for you guys now the good things about this phone um why I might actually want it again? Is this the novelty camera? I just love it so much the look of it: the build quality, it's 240 grams, so 230 grams. So not a lot of you might like it and again it's quite hard to reach out. Let's say you have small fingers here or short fingers. You can't reach to the other side and although some, although ASUS, allows you to pull down like the top part to the bottom again, I disabled it because it's very annoying because when it comes down here it doesn't you can't reach like you, can't reach like the middle part like this part, and it allows you like, maybe here, so it's still really annoying okay, so I didn't even enable it. Sometimes it just comes down, and it just annoys me so just keep that in mind that it's a two-handed phone, you need two hands to use it most of the time again, it's 240 grams.

You don't want to drop it and break it, and, although it seems really nice- and you know it's good quality Matteo- you don't just don't want to break it right, speaking of which it comes with uh, a nice case, which you always use, and I always use it, and the thing is that it does protect it, and I do like the build quality. So I'm coming back to what I do like about it. The build quality is nice uh ASUS near stock android UI is actually perfect. There is it's not like android one or my Nokia 7, for example, uh, my Nokia 7.1 plus, but uh that Nokia 7.1 plus, is actually using android one which is actually stock, android stock android. Has this really annoying search bar which ASUS doesn't have, or you can actually put it if you want, but you can remove it, but stock android doesn't allow you to remove it, so it doesn't have that search bar in the Google search bar.

So that's awesome, uh. I just love how quick it is. You know everything is smooth and nice. Even at 60 hertz, you don't have to use 90 hertz. I don't really really really see the difference with 90hz to be honest, like I'll, take 60hz to save the battery, and you know if you don't use it much then yeah the battery can last a day.

So that's one thing good and the sound quality is just awesome. You just heard mobile legends. Just now I loved how it sounds. You know it's so loud. For example, I'm going to start clash, royale see how loud it is.

It's just for gaming. It's just awesome like the sound. So that's one thing I really like about this phone uh again, when you do like video calls like zoom video course. The size of the screen is just awesome. You can see everything here like uh.

Let me just show you guys on YouTube, for example, and just imagine you know see that it's so huge, like there's no camera in front, it's just awesome. So that's one thing I really like and again when you're doing, Zoom calls when you're doing Zoom calls its just awesome, because the video camera is going to be the main one and people can see. You really clearly so just bear in mind that when you're, using apps like zoom or Instagram or Facebook, you're going to always use the wide angle, camera the wide-angle camera, which is uh this one right. The wide angle camera is the 12 megapixel and not the 64 megapixel one. So it defaults to that.

I don't think you can actually change it with 64 megapixels. The only way you can use it is use a camera, app use the 64 megapixel one and upload your videos or photos to Facebook or Instagram, but not directly when you're using the app itself. You can't use that so that's kind of weird. But again you know there are many. These are like probably things that musters can fix in the software and, to be honest, I really do like this phone because of the snapdragon 88, which is really fast and uh.

You know I might get it again because for the price right for the price and the price is actually coming down, I think there's not that many people are buying. This people prefer the before 8 uh before flip, like I said, there's no water resistance, there's no there's no like uh wireless charging, and although you might say that wireless charging is not important for you, don't forget that you're going to keep plugging in and plugging out. You might damage your phone's port and also um. When you are you know, sometimes you just want to charge it, and you make sure that it's charging its easier, just to put it on the wireless charger, and you'll see charging. You know it's charging, but when you plug in the cable, sometimes it shows it's charging, but it's not really fully charging because you didn't plug it in properly, for example, and yeah.

Oh yeah, one more thing I really like about it speaking about charging is that when you charge it, you can set it to like 80 charge, so it would not charge to the full battery like uh. Even it will allow you to use the like set the limits to the charging so yeah. I can't really see here, but basically let me see if I can just go to the battery with the battery, so you go to battery, you can actually set low battery power. Saving you can set scheduled power saving. You can actually have battery care, which is the one I'm talking about steady charging, so you won't charge it so quickly to not damage your phone.

It has scheduled charging which allows you to charge at certain times of the night, and it has the charging limit 80 90 percent on hundred percent. I usually set it at ninety percent because I don't want to overcharge my phone, so it will always have charged just up to ninety percent. I can just leave it charging, I don't have to worry and when I'm playing games I just leave it charging as well, which is awesome right uh. It really keeps your battery in perfect condition. As you can see here, this battery even tells you.

If you have child you charge it really. Well, it's all green, so I've charged it really well. You've been taking care of your battery. I've been taking care of my battery, so you know that's something that I'm particularly about. I love that and that's one of the reasons why I want to get phone again for the price you, wouldn't you wouldn't get this kind of quality uh from any other phone, except maybe china made phones if you're into china made phones, then obviously you might actually get a better value, but you know if you compare it in Samsung or those like any other branded phone like Motorola any phone that is not made in China, you will not go to get the same specifications for this price.

So again it's about 750 us dollars or maybe 800 us dollars for some of you guys, but I think it's well worth it so uh, like I said, if you get a chance uh, I would suggest this phone. I got a black version because you know it's not so noticeable. Actually, when you bring it out, and you're filming people can't see you film it and well that it is just cool for that, like vlogging and stuff, because you don't want people to you know, so you don't want to be so obvious that you're vlogging, but, like I said there are many shortcomings, hopefully also can fix it through the software updates, but uh. If you guys, are thinking whether to order it or not. I would suggest you go, try it out in the shop to see if you like the weight of it, because that's the first thing that you know that really affected me when I open it like wow, it's just so heavy, but after a while you get used to it and it kind of grows into you and that flip camera that 50 camera it's something of a novelty that you know, you're willing to pay for I'm willing to pay for it.

If it doesn't have this charging issue that I'm having yeah so charging and powering up the shoelaces I'll link it below. So you guys won't know what I'm talking about and if you guys decide to buy it. Yeah, I would still recommend that you buy it, because not many phone companies create phones like this anymore, and I really hope you guys can support us so that they will continue improving on the flip phone that they have here and yeah guys. I hope you guys like this little video, that I did this little review. If there's any other questions, you guys want to ask me uh, please do comment below and do like and subscribe to this channel.

Thank you guys I'll see you guys bye.

Source : Sherman Chin