Zenfone 4 Selfie Dual is the lightest mobile I’ve held, with 3000 mAh battery in it. It feels premium in the hand. The weight distribution is even. The front camera is a dual setup with a flash. The fingerprint sensor is placed on the display and it acts as the home screen. The navigation keys are not backlit. The design of the Zenfone 4 Selfie Dual may be familiar, but the good quality material gives the Zenfone series a much-wanted refresh.
Display
Zenfone 4 Selfie Dual has a 5.5 inch IPS LCD panel. It supports 720p resolution and has a 2.5D curved edge on its display. The display has a good color reproduction with the bright and vivid screen but come-on Asus it’s 2017 phones with 120hz refresh rate are being made and we get a 720p display? The screen is bright enough to be visible under direct sunlight. It’s just that It’s the year 2017 and I wish manufacturers stop making 720p displays.
Hardware and Performance
Zenfone 4 Selfie Dual is powered by Snapdragon 430 with Adreno 505 GPU. It has 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB storage. The memory can be expanded up to 2TB, however, I am sure the cost of a 2 TB SD card would be higher than the cost of this mobile today. It supports USB OTG. In terms of performance, though the processor is old, software optimization gives this mobile a smooth performance. Asus as toned down the UI and optimised it for this low hardware specs. Gameplay is smooth and even 30 minutes of continuous gaming increases the temperature by just 8 degrees. The graphics quality is average owing to the low-powered GPU and HD display. But this mobile is not meant for high performance or gamers so the specs are decent enough to run all your social media apps.
Camera
The mobile has 16 MP sensor with f/2.0 lens at the rear and 20 MP sensor with f/2.0 and 8 MP sensor with a wide lens and f/2.4 aperture. The rear camera is fast in focusing. It produces images with good color accuracy, but not quite sharp. Camera renders lots of noise. The UI is same as what we see in the Zenfone, but it has a few improvements. The manual mode is a boon to this camera. Images shot in manual mode are better than one with Auto mode.
The front camera lets you switch between wide angle lens and a normal lens. The wide-angle lens can accommodate just 10 to 20% more in the frame. But both these modes have portrait mode to blur the background. Let’s talk about this the background blur is not good, at least not now. just like Google Pixel, this too works on Edge detection algorithm, which sometimes works and most of the time looks un-natural. But it could be fixed with future software updates. The performance of this selfie camera is much better than Vivo Y69 or Oppo A57 in this price range.
Software
Zenfone 4 Selfie Dual runs on Android Nougat with ZenUI 4.0 skin on top. ZenUI has now discarded most of its bloatware. It comes pre-loaded with a minimal set of apps. The UI is also optimized. It has a selected few sensible features and I have nothing to complain about the UI. Overall, the UI gives you a smooth and snappy experience. But I still prefer stock android.
Battery
The mobile has 3000 mAh battery, but it comes with a 1.35 A charger and roughly takes about 3 hours to charge the mobile from 0 to 100%. But once charged, the mobile gives me 4-5 hours of screen on time. On a single charge, it lasts for more than a day of moderate usage.
