It’s quite a challenge reviewing a selfie-focused smartphone when you’re not keen on taking selfies yourself.
Yet, the ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie proved a valuable companion for taking Instagram-worthy selfies. It takes good photos whether in a bright sunny day or in a café with mellow lighting. I have mixed feelings with the wide-angle secondary selfie camera though.
Photography
The ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie is equipped with a dual selfie camera. It has a 20 Megapixel main selfie camera and an 8 Megapixel wide angle secondary selfie camera. There’s a front LED flash too!
I took some selfies in different lighting conditions and it delivered good pictures. Shots in low light situations can be dramatic but the front LED flash can make faces brighter.
Here’s a sample selfie:
A selfie with Portrait Mode shot with the ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie.
Make sure to steady your hand or selfie stick while taking that selfie though. It has no autofocus nor optical image stabilization so shaky hands will produce blurry selfies. Furthermore, use the front LED flash sparingly because it’s bright enough to produce an after image.
As much as possible, I don’t switch to the wide angle selfie camera. It’s a huge step down from the 20MP main selfie camera. There’s a very obvious drop in quality so it’s better to just squeeze tighter together when taking a group selfie.
Normal vs. wide angle selfie using the ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie.
The lone 16 Megapixel camera at the back can take good pictures and videos too. Of course, it’s not on the level of the ASUS Zenfone 4 but you’ll buy this primarily for the selfie quality.
Here’s a sample shot using the rear camera:
The rear camera of the ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie can also take good pictures.
Design and Display
The ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie has a plastic back plate but it’s covered with a metallic finish paint job that glistens when light hits it. This makes it lighter than metal clad phones but still look gorgeous.
The glittery effect on the back of the ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie. It’s more pronounced IRL.
On the front, the 5.5-inch HD display is clear and bright even in direct sunlight with 400 nits of maximum brightness. The 2.5D curved edges also adds to its aesthetics but it should be covered with a screen protector.
Its bezels are slimmer than usual but the back plate curves towards the front adding around a millimeter and a half of bezels.
Performance
Geekbench score of the ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie.
The ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie runs on an octa core Snapdragon 430 processor with 4GB of RAM. Hence, heavy games run just fine and switching to different apps is smooth.
The ZenUI software is now simpler with very few pre-installed apps. This contributes to the improved performance compared to previous Zenfone Selfie smartphones.
Since I reviewed this together with the Zenfone 4, there is a noticeable difference in performance between the two. The Zenfone 4 Selfie is average in terms of performance but excellent in taking selfies and that’s the whole point of its existence.
Connectivity
More and more smartphones now come with a hybrid sim card tray – one slot for SIM one and another slot that can be used by either a second SIM or a microSD card. Thankfully, the ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie has individual slots for the two SIM cards and a memory card!
The quality of mobile data connection largely depends on the area. Nevertheless, the ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie can take advantage of 4G LTE networks in the 700MHz spectrum.
It also has a microUSB 2.0 port for charging and file transfer with support for USB OTG function.
Battery Life
The ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie has a built-in battery.
The ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie is equipped with a built-in 3000mAh battery. Charging time is around 2 hours and 20 minutes from zero to a hundred percent.
In our Selfie Battery Test, the ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie lasted 5 hours and 30 minutes taking selfies every minute. That’s more than 300 selfies!
Still, it can last through the whole day with average usage.
Special thanks to Widget City for providing the review unit. The ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie is available at the Widget City online shop for ₱13,995.00 only with a free Smart LTE SIM.
ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie Review Summary
The ASUS Zenfone 4 Selfie is a reliable selfie centric smartphone with decent performance and battery life.
- 5.5-inch HD IPS LCD Display (720 x 1280 Pixels), 267 ppi
- Android 7.0 Nougat Operating System
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 430 Chipset
- 4GB of RAM
- 16.0 Megapixel Rear Camera with Dual-tone LED Flash
- 20.0 + 8.0 Megapixel Front Camera
- Dual SIM
- 64GB Internal Storage
- Expandable Up to 256 via microSD
- 4G LTE, 3G HSPA+, 2G EDGE & GPRS Networks
- Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
- Bluetooth 4.1
- MicroUSB 2.0
- 3.5mm Audio Jack
- Fingerprint Sensor
- 3000mAh Battery
- Fast Charging
- ₱13,995.00 Official Price in the Philippines
