Endurance Android Smartphones

There’s a trend we’ve been noticing with Qualcomm Snapdragon 625 devices; they don’t just offer great all-round performance, but seem to be extremely efficient when it comes to sipping at battery reserves too. If you want a smartphone that can actually outlast your day, you’re in luck.

- Liu Hongzuo

ASUS ZENFONE 3

What stood out to us was the overall build quality and material choices found on the ZenFone 3. Its polished glass rear was a huge upgrade to the metallic-looking plastic cover it used before. In addition to appearance, the ZenFone 3 is the first ASUS phone with a fingerprint sensor.

It uses a 5.5-inch, Full HD IPS display and it boasts a display brightness of 600nits.The combination of an IPS display, wide viewing angle, and above-average brightness levels led ASUS to claim that they make the ZenFone 3’s display readable from any direction. It might be a tinge warm, but it’s not that obvious in day-to-day use.

The ZenFone 3 supports Hi-Res Audio output, which is a nice feature for a RM1,699 phone. It means that you can play audio files rated at 24-bit/96KHz or 24-bit/192KHz. To experience this audio feature, simply link the ZenFone 3 with an external speaker or a pair of headphones that support Hi-Res Audio.

This phone uses a 16-megapixel rear camera that’s helped along with ASUS TriTech Autofocus. This autofocus system combines their laser, phase detection, and contrast detection abilities to focus on the subject in as fast as 0.03 seconds. The camera quality is decent for a low-cost phone. It’s able to focus very quickly (as promised), and its colors are distinct and relatively vibrant.

The ZenFone 3 has an average 3,000mAh battery capacity, but battery performance is anything but so. Part of the reason could be the newer Snapdragon 625 processor, one that Qualcomm claims to be 35 percent more power efficient than its predecessor. And as you’ll notice from the rest of this shootout, there is truth to this claim.