The Asus ZenFone 5 will be one of the three Android smartphones that the company launches in India on July 9 and if it’s priced at Rs 15000, then we can see it giving stiff competition to others like the Moto G, HTC Desire 516 and BlackBerry Z3. Yes, we’ve included the Z3 in our reckoning because the brand still has a decent fan following in the country no matter what you think about it.
Starting with the specifications first, the Asus ZenFone 5 smartphone has a 5-inch capacitive touchscreen delivering 720p resolution visuals and it is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass. Asus has included IPS (In-plane switching) technology so that the display is viewable from all sorts of angles without too much difficulty. Sitting above this panel is a 2MP webcam for video chatting and selfies, of course.
In terms of design, the Asus ZenFone 5 certainly has good things going for it beginning with the soft plastic shell and then the patterned metallic strip on the front giving it a signature look. Flip it onto its face and you’ll see an 8MP camera with a LED flash unit and a smoothly curvy back. The smartphone however arrives only with Jelly Bean aboard when Asus could have introduced it with KitKat instead of promising to deliver an update in the future.
Asus ZenFone 5 specs at a glance:
– 5-inch 720p IPS touchscreen
– Android 4.3 Jelly Bean OS
– Dual core Intel Atom Z2560 processor
– 64GB microSD card support
– 1GB/2GB of RAM, 8GB/16GB ROM
– 8MP and 2MP cameras
– 148.2 x 72.8 x 10.3 millimeters
– 145 grams
– 2110mAh Li-ion battery
If you’re a little uncertain about buying a handset with any chipset but a Qualcomm SoC, then do note that the 5-inch ZenFone embeds a dual core one from Intel with Hyperthreading technology for handling multiple tasks as smoothly as possible. The smartphone is obviously going to land with dual SIM card slots (GSM + GSM) since it’s the norm for mid-range cells these days. Its 2110mAh Li-ion battery will let you squeeze out almost 18.5 hours 3G talk time.
Also read: Flipkart tempting Moto G buyers with Rs 1 lakh gift voucher and 100% cash back
The Asus ZenFone 5 was unveiled in five color options of purple, gold, white, red and black, though there’s no confirmation whether all these hues will be available to you when the phone is released in India.
