ASUS ZenFone 4 (ZE554KL) Review

1. Introduction2. Design & Display3. Performance & Software4. Camera & Battery5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

Camera

Here we present a gallery of some ZenFone 4 photos. They have not been edited either on the phone or with any post-processing software, so what you see is what you get straight from the phone without any additional processing.

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On the whole, I think both the 16MP primary and the 8MP secondary cameras are pretty good for the money.

Starting off with the primary shooter, this one obviously captures narrower shots than its wide-angle counterpart, but its shot are definitely sharper and typically have better exposures. HDR works very well, levelling off dark and bright areas into an overall pleasing image.

The wide-angle camera is also capable but I'd try to stick with the primary shooter unless you absolutely need the wide field-of-view. It is not bad, its images are just slightly soft and you do get a fair bit of barrel distortion which is especially evident when photographing anything with straight lines.

I always want to touch on the phone's portrait mode – it is not great. You'll notice in the first of my two selfies, taken in bright sunlight with my hat on, the edges of my head are blurred, suggesting sub-optimal edge-detection in sunlight. The second selfie is much better, and that was taken on a cloudy day and I wasn't wearing my hat.

The photo following that is my dad sat at the dinner table. Edge-detection is similarly poor here in this low-light shot, so unless the conditions are good, stay away from portrait mode.

However, that is being picky. Normal photos taken with the auto mode are detailed, well-exposed and sharp, making the 16MP shooter very appealing considering the cost of the phone.

Battery

In terms of battery life, the 3300mAh battery performs probably as well as you would expect. This means I could comfortably get to bed with some battery left over, but you are likely to struggle to get past the one-day mark.

For example, a typical day of use includes me making calls, sending frequent WhatsApp messages, playing games and browsing social media at regular intervals. That usually adds up to around 5-and-a-half hours of screen-on time, and the ZenFone would usually finish the day with about 25% battery remaining. It's solid but not mind blowing, though it would be unfair to expect more from a device in this price category.

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