ASUS Zenfone 9, I believe that many people’s first impression when they see this phone is: “Why is this only the case”. Since the big transformation of Zenfone 6 and ROG Phone, I have begun to look forward to the surprise design of ASUS in every conference. Flip lenses, external fans, game handles, etc. However, just like the videos that flowed out before the conference, Zenfone 9 is really just a hardware upgrade of Zenfone 8…?
Although I joined the micro cloud platform, it may be because of the video that was accidentally released before the press conference. When it appeared at the press conference, I was not excited about it. Although Zenfone 9 has no big surprises this time, as a small mobile phone that focuses on photography and battery life, but can maintain such a lightweight body, is Zenfone 9 worth buying?
Introduction – ASUS Zenfone 9
From the front, Zenfone 9 is not significantly different from Zenfone 8. With the same 5.9-inch 20:9 screen size, the width of the screen border is indeed inferior in 2022.
But after turning to the back, the two huge eyes and the special back cover material make you see the difference from Zenfone 8 at a glance. The material of the back cover is also quite comfortable. The matte and skin-friendly composite coating plastic back cover has a little resistance, and it is quite stable to hold with one hand, so you don’t have to be afraid of slipping your hands.
Zenfone 9 is bolder than Zenfone 8’s design! Especially for this huge circular lens module, it is rare to see a non-rectangular lens bulge, and I have to give ASUS a thumbs up. Especially this time, ASUS put an industrial-style 09 font next to the lens to represent the 9 of Zenfone 9, which has a little more sense of technology. The back cover has replaced the previous concentric circle style, which I personally like.
The two lenses are covered at different heights, and the black metal surround on the edge makes the phone more refined, but in the white model, the silver metal ring is used, which I personally think is not so good-looking.
The frame has been changed to a flat design, so ASUS has room to insert a larger lens module and battery, and because the body width is only 68.1mm, it is quite comfortable to hold with one hand, and the flat frame actually enhances the mobile phone. grip. The transition of those micro-surfaces on the back makes the hand feel less stiff. Although the thickness of 9.1mm is not particularly thin today, for such a small mobile phone with a narrow width, having a slight thickness is actually a plus for the grip. Compared with those big-screen phones with flat bezels, such as the iPhone 13 Pro Max, the design of flat bezels makes sense.
The fingerprint recognition button on the side has returned, and the recognition speed is fast, and swiping down can also trigger the ZenTouch gesture that pulls down the status bar. ZenTouch is a big plus for the convenience of one-handed operation. It is no longer necessary to move the entire phone down by sliding the status bar. As long as the side is simply swiped, the status bar will come down, which is very convenient. And compared to the common under-screen fingerprint recognition, ATon feels that the side fingerprint recognition is more convenient in terms of speed and location, and it is commendable that ASUS can bring this design back. However, the edges of the buttons are somewhat cut, and the old problems that have appeared on the Zenfone 7 still exist, and only the fingerprint recognition area can slide. For a few people with long fingernails, this gesture may not be so smooth. This part If you have any doubts, it is recommended to find a display machine to play.
It weighs only 169g and measures only 146.5 × 68.1 × 9.1mm in length, width and height. It is very small and easy to hold with one hand. In this era of big 5G mobile phones, it is quite rare to have such a small mobile phone. And I think the most powerful thing about him is that although it is small, it has everything it should have, even the headphone jack!
Summarize the appearance of this generation of Zenfone 9 in one sentence, the front is the same as Zenfone 8, and it also adopts the design of mini mobile phone. The design on the back has been greatly changed, with a bolder style and a more lively color scheme. I even started to add some of ASUS’s own design elements. I personally look forward to how the design direction of ASUS products will become in the future.
Screen – unchanged from Zenfone 8
The screen part is still the 5.9-inch Samsung E4 AMOLED of Zenfone 8, with good color performance and sufficient color accuracy. When the full screen is displayed in white, the manual maximum brightness is 459.38 nits, and the automatic maximum brightness is 824 nits.
120Hz update rate, 60 / 90 / 120Hz three gears can be automatically switched. The presence of the hole in the upper left corner is not high, at least for me personally, the hole on this side is much more low-key than the “mole” placed in the middle.
Performance – S8+ Gen1 feels a big upgrade
In the past two years, there have been a lot of heat problems in the flagship machine of Antou, and this credit comes from Qualcomm’s replacement of the foundry of the processor from TSMC to Samsung. So last year’s Qualcomm flagship processor – Fire Dragon Snapdragon 888 overturned. The next year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is also hot because it is still Samsung’s foundry. As a result, it is 2022, and many flagship phones are also equipped with the Snapdragon 870 manufactured by TSMC, which is equivalent to the S865 processor. And finally, after waiting for half a year, TSMC’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 debuted. The heat and power consumption have instantly become the past, and the Zenfone 9 is equipped with this TSMC OEM processor. In theory, Zenfone 9 can therefore surpass other competing products in terms of power saving, performance, and temperature performance, so let’s take a look.
GeekBench 5, used to test the theoretical performance of the CPU, the score is shown in the figure. An interesting phenomenon can be seen here. In the default performance mode – dynamic performance, Zenfone 9’s performance is not optimal. You need to turn on the high-performance mode to be able to exert full strength.
3DMark WildLife Stress Test, used to test theoretical game performance, the results are shown in the figure. It can be seen that in the dynamic mode, Zenfone 9 also does not show the best strength, and it needs to turn on the performance mode to be able to play. But what is interesting is that when running the test in dynamic mode, the body temperature of Zenfone 9 is quite low, and it is not hot. From this observation, it can be guessed that ASUS’s tuning strategy this time is to reduce the frequency of the processor while keeping the phone not hot. Therefore, whether it is playing games, swiping FB for a long time, etc., the mobile phone will not be hot. However, for high-load applications such as playing games, performance bottlenecks are more likely to occur. But in fact, this is not bad. If you want performance, just turn on the performance mode. If you don’t need it, you can maintain the dynamic mode. You can still enjoy the high-speed mobile phone experience.
Although the gaming part is not the Zenfone 9’s specialty, after all, the screen is small and the heat dissipation is relatively limited, but we can still see how it performs. Here are a few benchmark games. The first is Genshin Impact. In performance mode, the average frame rate can reach 55.2.
In dynamic mode, the phone will limit the frame rate of Genshin Impact to a maximum of 40 FPS. The average frame measured 37.7.
World of Tanks, FPS average 106.5.
I think the significance of Zenfone 9 with Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ gen 1 is power saving and normal temperature. How exaggerated was last year’s S888? It is an exaggeration that the back of the mobile phone can become a little hot by sliding the mobile phone for a long time every day. S8+ Gen 1, is a normal processor, allowing Zenfone 9 to have a normal performance. And thanks to the micro-upgrade of the cooling system of Zenfone 9, Zenfone 9 is still cool under daily long-term use. However, for large-scale games such as Genshin Impact, Zenfone 9 is more difficult to perform well. Users with heavy gaming needs can refer to the ROG Phone 6 series in the next shed.
Photo – How about the 6-axis anti-shake Hybrid gimbal?
The biggest change of Zenfone 9 is the camera. In addition to the upgrade of the photosensitive element from IMX686 to IMX766, it also added the micro-gimbal anti-shake function. The function of this thing is to add a 5-axis stabilizer to the entire camera module, and then use a multi-frame synthesis algorithm to allow the camera to take photos more stably, which theoretically helps to improve the performance of photos, especially night scenes. In addition, the camera still maintains the wide-angle main lens and ultra-wide-angle lens settings. Although there is no telephoto lens, in fact, in daily use, in most cases, individuals feel that digital zoom is enough for most people.
Then directly see the real photos. In the daytime scene, HDR can record the bright and dark parts very well, although the artificial traces synthesized by multiple frames are a bit obvious under the enlarged view.
Even in the face of strong light that you can’t even open your eyes, the Zenfone 9 can still record the highlights and shadows well.
The colors are more realistic and the scene reproduction is high, continuing the fine tradition of ASUS.
The ultra-wide-angle part continues the IMX363 sensor of the previous generation, and there is no OIS, so it will be a little uncomfortable to switch from the main lens to the ultra-wide-angle. After all, the main lens directly uses the micro gimbal, and the picture is super stable. I hope that the next generation can put OIS on the super wide angle.
At night, thanks to the addition of a larger photosensitive element and a micro-cloud platform, the clarity of the night scene is quite good.
Highlights are well suppressed.
And this generation has added a light track mode, which can be “handheld” to shoot out the track. It is a little pity that the tracks will be segmented by multi-frame synthesis. I hope ASUS can add some predictive algorithms in the future to connect the tracks in a straight line. And in the light track mode, the algorithm of the super night scene mode does not seem to be applied, resulting in serious overexposure of the bright parts. However, considering that the two functions of track synthesis and super night scene consume a lot of computing resources, and the light track mode is still in the Beta version, we will see if ASUS engineers can perform magic in the future to make this function more effective.
The UI part of the interface, I think this UI is more intuitive than before. First of all, there are mode buttons such as photo, video, night scene, etc. at the bottom. You can choose which ones to appear, and many will be classified into more options, so there will be no problem of scrolling left and right for a long time to find a shooting mode in the past.
The zoom dial has also been changed from the previous horizontal to a more usable roulette. However, in the past, the tracking focus, which was very useful for shooting dynamic objects, and the file scanning function, which was very useful for shooting documents, have been unplugged. I really hope that both can be kept!
After using it for a while, I am personally satisfied with the Zenfone 9’s camera. First, the addition of the micro-cloud platform greatly improves the success rate of shooting, and the exposure time can also be extended in manual mode. Second, it is difficult to imagine that such a small mobile phone can put the IMX766 and the micro-cloud platform at the same time. Although the mobile phone is small, its camera strength is not sloppy at all. Just because of this huge lens module, and the phone itself is relatively small, you may need to be careful not to cover the edge of the lens with your fingers during ultra-wide-angle shooting.
Battery – good life
4300mAh, which is the size of the battery Asus gave the Zenfone 9. In terms of this small size, it is really unscientific. Of course, the sacrifice is wireless charging and only 30W fast charging. But to be honest, it’s worth it. This 4300mAh is paired with the TSMC S8+ Gen 1 processor, and it is absolutely no problem to open the 5G network for daily use all day. Compared with the iPhone mini and iPhone SE, which are out of power, Zenfone 9 demonstrates what a good trade-off is. Pack a bigger battery and sacrifice fast charging and wireless charging. However, the words are unfounded. When the performance mode is maintained in the dynamic mode, the screen brightness is fixed at 200nits, and the screen update rate is fixed at 120Hz, the PCMark endurance test score is 11 hours and 17 minutes. That’s 3 hours more than the Zenfone 8 Flip with its 5000mAh battery.
Experience – Does ASUS Zenfone 9 work?
ASUS Zenfone 9, although the launch of the phone itself did not have many surprises, but I really like this phone. The Zenfone 9 reminds me of the days of the Zenfone 3, good looks, practical specs, and it’s a phone that people will love and enjoy. Especially in the 5G generation, when all mobile phones have become more obese, ASUS’s choice to make a mobile phone that is light and easy to handle and can be operated with one hand is commendable. And just like the success of Zenfone 3, Zenfone 9 is a very ASUS mobile phone, with exclusive features, unique design language and practical functions, and no inexplicable spokesperson.
Exactly, better. This sentence is very suitable for Zenfone 9. It is a very “just” mobile phone for most users, and it is maintained at a relatively affordable price. I think most people will enjoy using it.