Asus is churning out a handful of impressive smartphones lately in their zenfone lineup. Their latest addition is the Asus Zenfone 3S Max which is the point of discussion in this review. This phone comes in two colors: Black and Sand Gold. It packs a stunning 5000 mAh battery which is non removable and is the main selling point of this phone. This battery ridicules and laughs at all the smaller mediocre ones in the other phones. It supports dual SIM (not supporting Dual SIM is a deal breaker in the Indian market and this phone is made for the Indian market), one slot for micro SIM and one for Nano SIM which doubles as a microSD card slot. 4G and Voice over LTE is supported, no worries for all the Jio users out there.
Asus Zenfone 3S Max Specifications:
- 5.2 inch 720p display
- 5000 mAh battery
- 3 GB ram
- 1 GHz octa-core processor
- 13 MP rear camera and 8 MP front shooter
- 32 gigs of Internal storage with up to 2 TB expandable storage
- Android Nougat with Zen UI 3.0
- 4G and Voice LTE
Build quality:
First off, let’s talk about the build quality. For a mid-range phone, Asus Zenfone 3S Max’s build comes off as pretty nice. With an all metal body, it sports a rather premium look, that is until you touch it. It has a matte finish on its back and looks quite elegant. The upper and lower parts of the body are darker than the rest. The microphone sits at the bottom with the USB port. The 3.5 mm headphone jack sits at the top left.
Aesthetics:
The phone does look that inspiring in terms of design and the gold color variant stands out from the crowd with its glossiness. But it is certainly not fair to expect ground breaking design from a mid-range phone whose selling point is its features for such a low cost.
Display:
The Zenfone 3S Max rocks a 5.2 inch display with 720-pixel quality, which might be a deal breaker for some, considering there are better displays from other competitors in the same price range. The 2.5 D curved glass over the display has a very nice and smooth feel to it. You will find yourself touching it more often than not. The viewing angles are pretty good.
Camera:
Asus Zenfone 3S Max packs a slightly protruding 13 MP dual LED flash camera at the rear and 8 MP at the front. The camera comes off as impressive and the shots at night were found to have little grain and noise. At daytime, the camera was splendid, indeed. The performance of camera was quite snappy. The full HD video quality turned out pretty good with snappy performance.
Battery:
This is the main selling point of the phone. Asus Zenfone 3S Max packs a humongous non-removable 5000 mAh battery, the feature that all the hard core smartphone users will drool for, as it gives them the extra mileage for the charge. With average usage, 2 to 2.5 days of charge is expected and with heavy usage 10-15 hours of battery life is expected.
Performance:
Games such as Asphalt 8 and Modern combat 5 performed quite well with no lag whatsoever which is excellent considering both are high end games. The battery temperature was not too high either. The sound quality is top notch with high sound output and as usual like the traditional smartphones, it sports Proximity sensor, Accelerometer and Ambient light sensor.
Software:
Coming to the most important part, which is the software part, we have got both good news and bad news. The good news is that Asus Zenfone 3S Max rocks the latest and greatest Android version, Nougat 7.0 with all the excellent features like direct notification reply, bundled notifications, split screen multitasking, multi window drag and drop images and text, new animations, and much more. It also supports double tap to wake and double tap to sleep. The bad news is that it comes with the OEM bundled and bloated Zen UI 3.0 which, in the long run may slow down your phone. It comes with pre-installed junk and that might be a deal breaker for some.
Verdict:
This Asus Zenfone 3S Max with great build quality and brilliant battery performance may win you over if you’re a heavy user. With Android 7.0, it comes with all the latest features which is awesome. It also packs two good cameras with great audio. The major drawbacks are it has a mediocre display quality and comes with bloated Zen OS. It’s priced at Rs. 14,999. The pricing could have been more aggressive as it is made for the Indian market to truly compete with the competitors.
All in all, it’s a pretty nicely built mobile phone with a huge battery to satisfy your lust.