Zenfone 2 - ZE551ML Full Review | Tek Syndicate

Level1Techs
21

Nice review Wendell, and thanks for the elaboration on the benefits of Atom. Look forward to the video, and glad you got your hands on one! You guys should do more cell phone reviews!

Edit: Oh, derp, there's the review on the youtubez.

Edit 2: Great review, Wendell. I've been in the market for a new phone and have been watching a shitload of cell phone reviews lately. I'm probably going with either a Nexus or Oneplus one, just for official Kali Nethunter support from Offensive Security, but one thing that has really struck me about so many of the cell phone reviews out there is they're all basically the same fucking thing, and I can't stand it. Almost every youtuber's reviews are the exact same, with very few exceptions. I've found pretty much just MKBHD, and Erica Griffin to be worth watching. Erica is the best. Android Authority is just OK, but they seem to set the standard for meh. What draws me to reviewers is individuality, and uniqueness in the reviews. When I'm trying to decide what phone to buy, I want to watch several reviews on the phone I'm considering. When every fucking person just says the exact same bullshit about the phone, it really gets old, and defeats the purpose. Way too many of the reviews I see are bullshit little eight minute, token reviews that don't really provide any in depth information at all. What makes Erica so good I think is that she goes very in depth, and her videos are nice and loooooooong.

I've watched several reviews on the Zenphone 2, and yours stood out because you talked about not just the specs, but also the quick response of the touch screen, the wifi and LTE bandwidth, expandable SD card exceeding written specs, your font changing "hack", you discussed rooting and the bootloader, and the differentiating implications of the underlying Atom processor architecture. So I'd definitely like to see more phone reviews from you guys, because you guys really do your homework and make superb videos, and my advice is to strive to be unique, separate yourself from what everyone else is saying and doing, and really go in depth on technical issues on the phones you review. Do you know how many reviewers discuss things like rooting and bootloaders in their phone reviews? Fucking none of them! Your audience is geeks who are looking to get technical, "power user" information on devices, so give in depth, technical information. Again, a deciding factor for me in choosing what phone to buy is which one will be easiest to put Nethunter on, so I think you guys could really fill the technical, "power user" gap on issues like this that pretty much every reviewer out there doesn't even touch upon.

Another thing that struck me about all the cookie cutter phone reviewers out there is how they all seem to create videos just for the masses of casual phone users. If those casual phone users searching phone reviews came across tek phone reviews, you might be able to really increase your video views, so I think doing phone reviews is a really good idea.

Nice review, have fun in China!

<3

1 Like
22

I suggest you are careful, anything outside the european union will be taxed by customs on arrival, also the shipping might cost a lot, so it might not be the best idea.

23

I know about this and that's not a problem :) I just need to find out if it will work here.

24

It will work, it says it's unlocked, so you can use any sim you want, as long as you have to correct SIM type.

25

I watched this for the front camera test, expecting a Wendell selfie.
I am disappointed.

Also, why are there 3 of these?

1 Like
26

I watched a review bashing this phone, and didn't think anything of it. One of the reviewers quibbles was "ew standby button on top edge", and no mention of 64-bit proc! Another complaint was inadequate brightness/luminance, with what looked like a luminance measuring device. That was kind of neat..

Please, do more reviews. I would love to get consistent, reliable hardware reviews from a single source. I'd like to see you compare this to the LG G3. I got mine for <200$, and although streaming youtube, and unfortunately web surfing, eats the 3200 maH battery in an inconvenient amount of time, I found it to be a neat, modern, worthy product. Also, the screen gets hung changing from landscape to portrait and vice/versa, sometimes for up to 5 seconds. Weird.

1 Like
27

I didnt even know there was a mobile version of 3dmark, downloaded for my Droid Turbo and got 20754.

28

make sure it was ice storm unlimited -- there are 3 versions of that bench (icestorm, icestorm ultra and icestorm unlimited) with different settings for different classes of phones. So it can be a bit misleading when looking only at the raw score.

1 Like
29

The specs of this phone are equivalent to something like the new macbook or a net book, could we get windows 8.1 to run on it? Or ubuntu?

30

I am hoping modders make that so. Theoretically, yes. The part I'm excited about is full support for VT-x on the cpu: http://ark.intel.com/products/81195/Intel-Atom-Processor-Z3580-2M-Cache-up-to-2_33-GHz

Does that mean we could have a dual OS phone with Ubuntu/2gb ram and Android/2gb ram? Possibly. Modders, get cracking!

1 Like
31

Yup, confirmed it was Ice Storm Unlimited, scores as follows:

Score: 20754
Graphics score: 21719
Physics score: 17962
Graphics Test 1: 106fps
Graphics Test 2: 85.1fps
Physics Test: 57fps
OS version: 4.4.4 (Droid Turbo users still waiting on Lollipop....)

32

I would presume that ubuntu would have to come before windows because we could modify the code directly for it to support the hardware and SIM cards.

33

  1. The pricing could work wonders on the Apple product margins.

  2. The most interesting thing is the CPU from Intel.

  3. ASUS is making it.

My thing is hoping for a personal computer I can carry with me and dock around with, like Surface Pro 3, but in smart phone, pocket-physical format (no, I still don't believe in wearables), and with parts that I can change using a plain screwdriver.

Given that Ubuntu phone ( http://www.ubuntu.com/phone ) is likely to happen to some degree at least, it could finally be getting us to the point where we can own a computer, carry it with us, and then dock it to appropriate peripherals (fitting the use case context) wherever and whenever we want to use it in a different mode.

It would be fantastic to be able to scale this (for now just completely imagined) computer up to a full desktop by socking it into a full tower chassis ATX motherboard dock. Now if this "computer" also could be put together from custom enthusiast parts from a variety of vendors that only need to be snapped together, like we are able to build an enthusiast desktop today, that would be even more fantastic. At the very least this would kill the market for smartphone specific OS:es*. I can very much see things going that way. The pricing, the CPU, and the fact it is ASUS making the product (ASUS is traditionally in the business of making enthusiast hardware) could be a true game-changer. Anyone from ASUS reading this, DO IT.

*By smartphone OS:es I mean OS:es for smartphones and tablets which are optimized for consuming content, not producing content. Like Android, iOS, Windows Phone OS. As opposed to desktop OS:es like Linux, Windows, Mac OS, etc. My position on this is very much like back in the 80's and 90's - if you only give people an OS they can produce content with, more of them will end up producing content.

1 Like
34

That was a great review, and it has me seriously considering it...my wife was just complaining about her Galaxy 3 being slow and wanting a new phone. I advised that spending 7-800 for the new phones is just too much, but $200 for the 16 GB may actually not be a bad idea at all....Are there benchmarks that show it's performance vs. that of a Galaxy 3 and such?

35

Great review, Wendell!

I always enjoy the professionalism in the way you present information. You've got me considering getting one of these... It would sure be an upgrade from my Moto G, and my girlfriend has a broken-screen Droid that needs to be replaced too...

Thanks, and keep up the good work.

36

@wendell

I just looked into it and it seems this phone isn't really useable in Canada. It can be used on the Rogers service since they are GSM, but Rogers kinda sucks. All the other carriers (the good ones) are CDMA...

Rogers might be ok in some locations, but their coverage sucked in my location last time I checked.

37

Android softwares that uses the NDK (native development kit) usually built with some kind of framework, like LibGDX, and in those framework, all binaries are complied to both ARM and Intel,.
Also it's trivial to set up a build target for Intel, if you have the NDK set up, and Intel put a lot of money into make it happen, at one point they even paid developers who ported their native code using app to work with Intel.
And from a experience, i can tell you that there is no, or at least very little compatibility issue with Intel, there are a few indie games that won't wotk, but that's all

1 Like
38

Interesting. I always looked away from x86 Android devices since it is ARM dominate but I never realized that the NDK is both x86 and ARM. Thank you for telling me this.

39

Great review! I only wish you covered camera quality some more.

I would definitely like to see phones covered in the future, but only ones that "shake things up" like the Zenfone or the One Plus One.

40

WTF is an SSD? Is that my case or something ;)