Asus Zenfone Zoom detail specifications
GENERAL
Alternate names ZX550
Release date January 2016
Form factor Touchscreen
Dimensions (mm) 158.90 x 78.84 x 11.95
Weight (g) 185.00
Battery capacity (mAh) 3000
Removable battery No
Colours Meteorite black, Glacier white
SAR value 0.375
DISPLAY
Screen size (inches) 5.50
Touchscreen Yes
Resolution 1080x1920 pixels
Pixels per inch (PPI) 403
HARDWARE
Processor 2.5 GHz Quad-core
Processor make Intel Atom Z3580
RAM 4GB
Internal storage 128GB
Expandable storage Yes
Expandable storage type microSD
Expandable storage up to (GB) 128
CAMERA
Rear camera 13-megapixel
Flash Yes
Front camera 5-megapixel
SOFTWARE
Operating System Android 5.0
Skin ZenUI 2.0
CONNECTIVITY
Wi-Fi Yes
Wi-Fi standards supported 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac
GPS Yes
Bluetooth Yes, v 4.00
NFC Yes
Infrared No
USB OTG Yes
Headphones 3.5mm
FM Yes
Number of SIMs 1
SIM Type Micro-SIM
GSM/CDMA GSM
3G Yes
4G/ LTE Yes
Supports 4G in India (Band 40) Yes
SENSORS
Compass/ Magnetometer Yes
Proximity sensor Yes
Accelerometer Yes
Ambient light sensor Yes
Gyroscope Yes
Barometer No
Temperature sensor No

After my favorite mobile phone company Nokia there is another company in the market from which we can expect some uniqueness, which is Asus. In this sence Asus had launched phone Zenfone Zoom. The ZenFone Zoom is what you can call a true high-end offering from the company in question. And it is a phone firmly focused on camera performance. This is its attempt at a smartphone with optical zoom and thankfully, it hasn't compromised (too much) on it being a smartphone. Available phones in market are on the same track i.e. the performance in less price segment but this time Asus comes with an innovative idea with Zenfone Zoom. Let’s see how innovative the phone is.

Look and Design
By seeing it first time it is very clear that it does not look like other Zenfone series. The unibody aluminium frame looks good and also gives the phone a good grip to hold phone comfortably. The Zoom has a shell made of leather and bits of metal. There's a massive disc in the middle where the camera assembly is - this is where Asus has managed to fit in the zoom lens in a sideways fashion. This means there's no protruding lens. Coming to make of the phone it has rounded sides make it very comfortable to hold too and as we already told that it has a good grip which make it more comfortable to hold. There are chamfered edges and chrome accents thoughtfully distributed around the edges and the camera section on the back, all lending to the phone's good looks. The back panel is made of leather and is removable with the microSIM card slot and non-removable battery buried inside. The ZenFone Zoom comes with dedicated camera shutter and video recording buttons on the right side. The volume rocker and power button are placed above them. Meanwhile, the left side is completely vacant. Everything right from button placement to their tactile feedback is spot-on. The build quality and finish of the phone are very good and we have to hand it to Asus for managing to squeeze an optical zoom lens into a body that's just 11.9mm at its thickest point.

Display
The ZenFone Zoom packs a 5.5-inch FullHD IPS display with a 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution and 401ppi pixel density, much like the ZenFone 2. It is protected by strong Corning's Gorilla Glass 4. The screen of the Zoom looks very bright and it look very bulky than the screen of the ZenFone 2 . Viewing angles are also good. Problem is cut-throat competition in and around this price point.
Even though IPS panels are known for better colour accuracy, the screen of the ZenFone Zoom tends to show slightly warmer colours by default. Turning the display settings to vivid -- and/or manually altering hue and saturation -- however gives you better results.

Specifications
Many other smartphone in the market packs Mediatech or Qualcomm processor but Asus is probably the only major smartphone maker that's so consistent with using Intel SoCs. The ZenFone Zoom is powered by a quad-core Intel Atom Z3590 and comes with good 4GB of RAM and 128GB of high onboard storage. We like the good amount of storage, and if you want more , you can expand it by another 128GB with a microSD card. Other main specs include Wi-Fi b/g/n/ac, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, USB OTG, FM radio, GPS and GLONASS.

Software
The Zoom runs Android 5.0 Lollipop-based ZenUI, we are really very disappointed with 5.0 lollipop . As we already said in our earlier post that it 6.0 can be better. Marshmallow is making headway in at least two phones in this price range: Nexus 6P and Moto X Style.
Asus contain pack of software for various uses. The company's own apps can only be disabled and all third party are uninstallable. Some wonderful useful app are AudioWizard, which lets you fine tune sound profiles for movie, music, gaming, or voice calls; Splendid, for adjusting the colour temperature and act as blue light filter. Mobile Manager, to get rid of junk files and free up system resources. As functional as the interface is, ZenUI is starting to show its age as it now feels a bit cluttered. It still functions very smoothly but with after using lighter skins from other manufacturers, ZenUI can be overwhelming, especially for a beginner.
One very interesting thing is that they had improved the Google app also. Taking an example of Gallery , the Gallery app can show you photos and videos from cloud services as well. PhotoCollage and MiniMovie are Asus apps integrated into the gallery which let you customise and package your photos and videos for sharing.

Camera
Coming to main focus of the phone, its camera. This is one of slimmest phone 3x optical zoom. We can say its 13 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom with a 10-element lens made by Hoya is nervous system of this phone. Add to this laser autofocus and Optical Image Stabilisation and you have a solid recipe for some good pictures. As such, its aperture ranges anywhere from f/2.7 to f/4.8 depending on the zoom. In daylight all the effect for example landscape, macros gives a great detail. Our review team is very happy with its very fast auto focus. But when we click a picture from it we get slightly disappointed with its shutter speed. No matter where the picture is taken , there is lagging in picture.
In low light the pictures are very impressive as many other smartphone we reviewed earlier does not show good performance in low light. There's a delay when zooming in as the picture in the viewfinder takes a second to catch up to the zoom level.
Coming to 5 megapixels front camera. The front with f/2.0 aperture and wide-angle 88-degree lens. We are also impressed with its front camera in both low and high light.
The camera app itself is pretty stacked in terms of user controls and modes. A fully dedicated manual mode -- along with a plethora of shooting modes -- means pros will have a good time with the Zoom. It's the other half -- which would be substantial -- that we dare say could be disappointed.
Video recording maxes out at 1080p and the quality is pretty good with a steady framerate. There's an option for slow-motion video as well. Sadly, 4K video recording is not available. The dual-LED flash is also decently powerful but only for short distances. A xenon flash would have complemented the phone nicely.

Performance
In performance segment the Asus Zenfone Zoom does not compromise at all , its performance is as good as high price segment. The ZenFone Zoom powered by a 2.5GHz quad-core Intel Atom Z3590 processor coupled with PowerVR G6430 GPU and 4GB of RAM. It comes with 128GB (112GB available) of internal memory which is further expandable by up to another 128GB via microSD card.
The Zoom is a classic case to prove how more cores does not necessarily mean better performance and vice versa. While basic tasks are handled well by the device, 4 gigs of RAM give it abundant multitasking potential. At a time, we had more than 20 apps running in the background (including graphical games) and the phone still showed no signs of slowing down.
The PowerVR GPU on-board makes the Zoom a fairly decent gaming device, with occasional hiccups while playing demanding games like Asphalt 8: Airborne and Implosion at high settings. Still, those instances were rare and the phone fared well while gaming majorly.
The Zoom fares decently in benchmarks too, although it's still far behind other phones with today's top-tier hardware. We got scores of 63,352 in AnTuTu and 21,170 in 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited. Despite the heavy skin and pre-loaded apps, you still have about 2.2GB free RAM on average.

Battery
The 3000mAh battery lasted for 7 hour in our video loop test, which is below average dissatisfied. Upon regular use with mixed usage of 4G and lots of shooting, we found that the ZenFone Zoom lasted us about 18-20 hours before needing a recharge. Thankfully, the phone supports fast charging and will get you up to 40 percent capacity in half an hour.

Conclusion
The Asus ZenFone Zoom comes at a premium for the sole reason that it's the only smartphone in the market at the moment with optical zoom. At Rs. 37,999, it competes with Samsung's Galaxy S6 range and the new Nexus 6P, both of which have excellent cameras these are not even 'camera-centric' phones for crying out loud.
This look very expensive looking about its performance. The phone might be a weak contender at its high launch price but it won't seem so bad when it drops to more reasonable levels. Asus has done a commendable job with the design and build of this phone. Optical zoom on smartphones requires many compromises and that's one of the reasons that it never really caught on.