Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00All right, this is the Asus Zenfone 10.
00:04Honestly, if you tasked me with making my own phone
00:07and I didn't have to care at all about how well it sells,
00:10but I'd actually want to use it,
00:12I think this is what I would make.
00:17Okay, so y'all remember the Zenfone 9 from last year, right?
00:19It won my best small phone of the year award easily
00:22and almost won my MVP for the whole year
00:24with so much going for it.
00:26The smallest size, the latest chip,
00:29outstanding battery life, A plus performance,
00:32rock solid cameras and fluid and clean software
00:35and a headphone jack.
00:36I mean, all of it was wrapped up
00:37in a $700 package in the US.
00:40I mean, they just do not make phones like this anymore.
00:42So now we've got the Zenfone 10 here
00:44and I think this one is nearly perfect.
00:46First of all, they kept basically all the great stuff.
00:49Actually, yeah, all of the great stuff from the last phone.
00:51All the fundamentals that made it so good.
00:53It's the latest chip again.
00:54It's a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
00:55It's still awesome performance,
00:57still world-class battery life.
00:59Yes, it still has a headphone jack,
01:01but they've also directly improved upon
01:03the three minor nitpicks that I actually did have
01:07with last year's phone.
01:09The first nitpick was that phone
01:10didn't have wireless charging.
01:11A lot of people said,
01:12oh, this would have been a great phone
01:13but it doesn't have wireless charging.
01:15Now we've got it.
01:15That was basically the only missing spec.
01:17Zenfone 10 now has the same size battery
01:20and I'm happy to report that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
01:22and software combo is still giving world-class battery life.
01:26I'm literally getting seven, eight plus hours
01:29of screen on time every single day
01:31and I basically never kill it in under 24 hours.
01:33So now it's wired charging at 30 watts
01:36with the charger included in the box
01:38and now 15 watt wireless charging.
01:41So there's basically no weakness here.
01:43Happy to see it.
01:44The second nitpick I had
01:45was actually the finish on the back.
01:47So I still have my original Zenfone 9 here, same color,
01:51but I don't know if you remember,
01:53I used it for about a month during my review period
01:55and it got absolutely chewed up.
01:58It's darker all the way around the outside,
02:00around the corners, mostly from wearing black pants.
02:03You know, the material wore off and stained.
02:05The soft touch of the back of the Zenfone 9
02:08was very easily worn down very quickly.
02:11And I understand most people just immediately put a case
02:13on their new phone, so I'm not gonna ignore that.
02:16But I also think if you're gonna make a phone
02:17with like a nice soft touch finish,
02:20you want to be able to touch it.
02:23It would be nice if you could use it like normal
02:25and not have this insanely accelerated aging.
02:27So Asus told me there's a slightly different material
02:29on the back of this Zenfone 10.
02:31It feels a little bit more coarse, if anything,
02:35but it's still got this soft touch finish.
02:38It's still got the slightly gritty texture.
02:40And from the looks of it so far, it's more durable.
02:43And you can also see there's a new Asus logo down here
02:45in the corner and some slightly cleaned up text
02:47on the back of the phone, but I still think it looks nice.
02:50And there's a bunch of color options now.
02:52I've been showing you the Eclipse Red,
02:53which is the one I've been using,
02:55but there's also a blue, there's a green,
02:57a black and a comet white.
02:59That's the only one I'm nervous about
03:01that might not hold up as well.
03:03But still, if I'm judging just by the way this red has gone,
03:06it's more durable than last year, which is awesome.
03:08It still rolls over into those flat matte black metal sides
03:11and the little cutouts for the headphone jack
03:13and the power button slash fingerprint reader
03:15is really nicely built.
03:16Assuming it continues to hold up the way it has,
03:19this is also fixed.
03:20So then the last little nitpick was that
03:22these aren't flagship cameras.
03:25And that's truly a nitpick
03:26because this isn't a flagship price phone.
03:29And honestly, these are very good cameras.
03:31Asus has done a great job with their software tuning
03:33for years in their cameras now,
03:35but they have updated the cameras in the Zenfone 10.
03:37It's still a 50 megapixel primary camera
03:39with a great contrasty software processing
03:42and a lot of dynamic range.
03:44But now there's an even more improved
03:45hybrid gimbal stabilization system.
03:47It's part of the reason why the rings
03:49on the back of this phone are so big.
03:51There's a huge six axis stabilization system
03:54taking the handshake out of still shots
03:57and also delivering some of the most impressive
03:59shake resistant video I have ever seen.
04:01So even without making the sensor bigger
04:03or higher resolution,
04:04you end up with sharper handheld exposures
04:07and sharper low light shots
04:08because the whole camera system
04:09is better at canceling out hand movement.
04:11And also since there is no telephoto camera,
04:14they did work on software zoom improvements.
04:17The difference isn't really dramatic
04:18and it's still not as good as having a dedicated zoom,
04:20but it's better than nothing
04:22once you get past about four or five X.
04:24All of that packaged up into a slightly more subtle looking
04:28pair of black rings on the back of this phone,
04:30I'd consider that another win.
04:32If I could still nitpick about cameras,
04:33I would actually nitpick a little bit
04:35about the front facing camera.
04:36It's still got this little silver ring in the corner,
04:39kind of reminds me of the Samsung A54.
04:40And it just makes it stick out a little bit
04:42instead of being a seamless cutout like some other phones.
04:45It's not a disaster, but it's there.
04:47So it's not perfect.
04:49There's also technically some other little stuff
04:51that they did as well.
04:52You might've seen it's 144 Hertz display now.
04:54They can say that on the spec sheet,
04:56but it's only 144 Hertz while gaming in certain games.
05:01But really it still spends most of its time at 120 Hertz
05:04and it's super smooth and it's LTPO, which is great.
05:07But as you can see, they're technically allowed to say
05:09it's 144 Hertz capable now.
05:11And they also added a little extra capability
05:13for the smart key on the side.
05:14The power button can now do quintuple duty.
05:18It's a power button, it's a fingerprint reader.
05:21You can double tap to open the camera.
05:22You can long press for whatever you want.
05:25I do Google Assistant and you can swipe up and down
05:28for that notification slider.
05:29And just in general, Asus software is still so good.
05:33It's clean, it's nearly stock Android.
05:35And they just got a few extra optimizations
05:37and extra features in there that they've added
05:39that are generally very useful.
05:41Things like battery health features
05:43and the little edge tool shortcut they've got going on.
05:46I wish you could open apps.
05:48This is another little nitpick.
05:49I wish you could open apps full screen from the edge tool,
05:52but that only lets you open apps windowed
05:54on an already small phone.
05:56But maybe the most unique thing I've seen
05:57that really feels like something like I would do
06:01if I was making an enthusiast phone
06:02that most people wouldn't care about,
06:03but still really cool,
06:05is the ability to customize the software experience
06:08way more specifically.
06:09So when you first unbox and set up the phone,
06:12you can actually go through the menus
06:13and choose which parts of the phone
06:16you want to be like stock Android
06:18and which parts you want to be Asus customized.
06:20From things like the launcher to the quick settings.
06:24I've never seen this in any other phone setup.
06:27Only Asus does it.
06:28I love it.
06:29And they wrap up all these improvements
06:30and little nitpick fixes in a phone
06:32that is the same price as last year.
06:35Again, who does that?
06:37The price was kind of confusing,
06:39I think a little bit to some people,
06:40but basically it's still the same price as last year,
06:43699 in the US.
06:45But then the Europe pricing includes taxes and import fees.
06:50So it ended up at 799 Euro.
06:54Either way, literally still a great deal.
06:56So my final nitpick,
06:57my last thing that I would like to see improved
07:01with these Zen phones
07:02that would really put it over the edge
07:04and nearly a perfect phone is software support.
07:07So Asus right now promises
07:10basically two years of software updates for the Zen phone,
07:12which is okay,
07:14but this is not the full life cycle of a phone like this.
07:17You'd ideally have it for three or four years
07:18and having it fully supported for those three to four years
07:21would be really nice.
07:22But other than that, well done Asus.
07:26Clearly there is no perfect phone,
07:28but this one is pretty close.
07:32Thanks for watching.
07:33Catch you guys in the next one.
07:35Peace.