14 DAY TRIAL // Asus announced its Zenfone family of smartphones earlier this year at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2014 trade fair, but the devices have yet to arrive on the market. Three handsets in the Zenfone series were showcased last month in Las Vegas, the ZenFone 4, 5 and 6, each powered by Intel Atom chipsets.
During Mobile World Congress (MWC) trade fair, we had the chance to take the Zenfone 6 for a spin and though it was less impressive than we originally thought, it’s still worth reporting on.
As the name suggests, Asus Zenfone 6 is a phablet that boasts a huge 6-inch display. That narrows its target from the start, as the device is now almost impossible to handle with only one hand.
From what we’ve experienced while testing the phone, we’ve realized that the Zenfone 6 is hard to carry around in your pocket unless you really have large pockets. According to Asus, the phablet measures 166.9 x 84.3 x 9.9mm and weighs almost 200g (battery included).
Given its large size, we initially felt it impressively light, but after spending a few minutes operating the device, we realized that our first impression was definitely wrong. At 200g, Asus Zenfone is not a lightweight phablet, which makes it even less desirable.
Perhaps the “mid-range” tag might excuse Asus’ work on the Zenfone 6, but as it is, we doubt anyone would find the phablet worthy of their investment.
Specs-wise, things are a little bit better. We found the Zenfone 6 pretty fast when operating multiple apps and browsing the Internet. That’s probably because of the powerful Intel Atom Z2580 processor clocked at 2GHz.
We were unable to run any games on the phablet, but the Zenfone 6 shouldn’t have any problems thanks to the PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU inside.
The unit we tested ran Android 4.3 Jelly Bean operating system, but we were informed that the Zenfone 6 would receive a KitKat upgrade at some point. Not sure when and if that will happen, but at least it’s something to hope for.
