Zenfone 8 - The most boring INCREDIBLE phone ever.

for the last month one phone has been on my mind one phone has come in and impressed me so much that it might be time to reevaluate how we think about other phones but it looks like this we're talking about the zenfone 8 the box looks a little on the rough side but that's because they've removed the layer of plastic that you normally see on a lot of other boxes plus more importantly it's got the goods a hardback plastic case with some light texture a usbc cable and a 30 watt charging room but then i saw the phone bearing in mind that this is 599 euros which is not super expensive but it's also not cheap that this is what last year's zenfone 7 looked like and the asus as a company has proven that they understand what it is that consumers want i was perplexed like what is this i was so confused how the same company who've created designs like this and this have just launched something so devoid of character i feel like i've just jumped back 10 years in a time machine actually let me show you something right have a look at this completely unbranded 100 generic it was actually 50 from wish.com but the point is this is kind of what this is reminding me of it's got a completely plain monotone finish a logo that really just looks like text and possibly the most generic looking camera system on the market right now asus did say that we've tried making loads of fancy color options in the past but because people would always just end up buying black anyways this time we've decided to keep things flat which is a fair point but i think because this phone's core design is so simple anyways it almost needs a more jazzy finish to stop it looking budget i did also do the usual sort of hand it to other people and see what they think test and the responses range from it looks like a toy to it looks like a prototype and i think the reason that it doesn't quite look finished is that the camera is misaligned like if you're going to put something in the corner you really have to make sure that it's an equal distance from both edges otherwise it just looks a bit lost they've tried to give it some flair by putting a chrome ring around the front camera i would normally be all four stuff like this but the whole reason these hole punch cameras are great is because you can kind of forget they're there putting this ring around it is a bit like having a constant reminder like hey don't forget about me i'm still here anyways the reason that i'm giving it such a hard time for this is that the design is completely at odds with what the phone can do you put this next to a oneplus 9 or a galaxy s21 or a xiaomi 11 it fades into the background when actually it's the star of the show and thanks to dashlane for sponsoring this video so keep at the forefront of your mind when i tell you this that this is a small phone in fact if all you did was just looked at its top down footprint you'd think okay it's about the size of an iphone 12 but it actually fits much better than that in the hand thanks to being not just narrower but also having a curved back versus apple's razor-like edges and the thing with small phones is that they are usually riddled with compromise because you've got to remember that if i take a big phone and just shrink everything it's going to be worse like if i make my cameras smaller they're going to let less light in if i try to have a chipset in there that takes up less space or needs less cooling it's going to be slower and if you have less room to push sound through your speakers are going to be quieter and so we've just kind of come to expect that if you're shopping for a small phone you're having to ask yourself the question what am i giving up for that size not anymore thanks to a new pcb design some very clever bits of engineering and just sensible decisions on what really matters for 599 euros you are getting some of the best hardware and software irrespective of size for example performance when you look at this thing you probably think oh it'll have a mid-range chip it actually has a snapdragon 888 still the fastest you can get paired with six to 16 gigabytes of fast lpddr5 ram and 128 to 256 gigabytes of fast ufs 3.1 storage that's not just high-end performance that is ultra performance we're talking 770 000-ish on the latest version of antutu benchmark slightly higher than my s21 ultra and that score sustains itself reasonably well even after repeating it but i did notice something fishy that it was auto entering a sort of high performance mode as it detected that a benchmark was running so take these figures with a heavy pinch of soul why are we like this but i've tried all sorts of games on this at their highest possible settings and it just feels awesome the phone can get warm but it didn't seem to impact performance at all and there's just something incredibly novel about running an open world game on max settings on a phone that you can almost completely use one-handed the display is quality too it has a 5.9 inch amoled 120 hertz refresh rate screen protected by gorilla glass victus it doesn't feel distinctly different to the very best phones i've used it's got a little bit more of a border than i'd like it isn't the number one brightest and it is only 1080p in resolution so i'm gonna hold off on calling it exceptional but to be honest for a screen of this size i wouldn't have used a higher resolution even if it was an option you just don't need it and the side effect of this one of the few things that compact phones do have going in their favor is that because you can get away with a lower resolution and a smaller display you don't need as big a battery and because you don't need a bigger battery you don't need as high a charging power output to get the same result slightly convoluted point i realized but what i'm trying to say is that even though the zenfone 8 four thousand milliamp hour cell and 30 watt charging sound like they belong on a mid-ranger in 2021 they deliver half an hour of charging will get you to about 70 and 70 on this phone is a full day of normal use partly because of the smaller display partly because they're using an e4 panel which cuts consumption by another 15 and also partly because this phone is stacked with battery saving nuggets like a dark overlay if you leave a game open without touching it like how it slightly dims your wallpaper like how aggressively it manages your background abs this is not just great battery for a small phone it's straight up great battery and if you are enjoying this video then a sub to the channel would be heavenly and this phone doesn't cut any of the corners that you would expect it to cut it has a smart key which is both the power button and whatever else you want it to be so like a true millennial life set mine up to double tap and open only instagram it's got a notification led on the bottom of the phone to check if your phone's finished charging or if your crush finally texted you back still waiting there's a new linear vibration motor that makes typing feel really satisfying it has one of the cleanest implementations of android with a deep level of customization if you're looking for it plus as it's an asus phone they've pretty much just dumped the entire software suite from the rog gaming phones on here too and we're not nearly done it has a set of stereo speakers that completely defies the phone's dimensions you literally will have to double take to check that so much volume is in fact coming from such a tiny package it has an official ip rating wireless charging at up to 15 watts and a headphone jack now i don't want to sound like one of those dinosaurs who's clinging onto the past because the headphone jack is on the way out but the fact that it is still featuring on this phone feels like nothing short of a miracle a flagship phone in 2021 whose entire being is centered around being as compact as possible has a headphone jack okay all of this just leaves us with one question mark the cameras but it's a big question mark after all asus isn't exactly known for creating incredible camera systems this is trying to be not just a compact phone but also an affordable phone and let's face it this doesn't exactly look like it's going to do much but it's better than you think so two cameras a main 64 megapixel one and a 12 megapixel ultra wide one and assuming that your expectations are somewhat grounded i think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the level of detail the background blur you can get the ability to brighten dark areas and control highlights and the general color profile too i'd call it natural but with a little bit of a pop and this carries through to the ultra wide which also has the bonus of generally minimal color shifting as you move to it as a sort of rough gauge on where this thing sits i'd say the zenfone 8 is just shy of the oneplus 9 in terms of photo quality which is not the greatest award you can bestow upon a mobile but that's a bigger phone that phone costs more and that phone is still considered some of the best value you can get nighttime performance is pretty good too actually and because this phone unlike other asus phones and also unlike the oneplus 9 has optical image stabilization i gotta say the video recording just feels like it's come from a larger camera but the obvious point of contention here is that we're in mid-2021 now can you really call this a flagship camera system if it's only got two cameras asus has an answer to this they say that yes we only have two cameras but these two cameras are doing the work of four cameras so the ultrawide camera doubles as a macro camera because it can also focus on close objects four centimeters away it's fine it's nothing special but it works and you'll also notice that there's no zoom lens here but because the main camera is 64 megapixel and by default it'll scale that down to 16 when you take photos there is also room in that sensor to be able to just punch in and still get a crisp 16 megapixel output so for example this is a normal photo taken at one time notice how we can't really see the brickwork of this building but this is two times and even though this shot is on the exact same camera now you can see the texture this type of zoom isn't a new concept and it's not a complete substitute for having a dedicated zoom camera but i do agree with asus's choice that if you were only going to have two lenses on your phone then it should be these two lenses a couple of things that do need work though are one the ui it's about time asus readed their interface it just feels wiry and not at all consistent with the bright material design of the rest of the operating system and two is the front camera and this is a bit weird because in the briefing document i received for this phone asus seemed very proud of the sensor they managed to use here in practicality it's fine but it's also not something you'd want to be bragging about like you can get nice shots in good lighting but if you try portrait mode it will blow out the background in low light it gets particularly grainy and because the angle is tight when you're taking video on this you almost have to kind of like stretch your hands out a little bit further than feels comfortable just to accommodate the face so overall this camera system is not incredible but it is good and if you have a look at this tally we've been keeping it should be pretty clear why this phone is so special because even though the cameras are good they are like the weakest part of it the performance the display the battery all the little things like the notification led the headphone jack the size of the speaker units these are very good and these are very good by the standard of any phone let alone a device with such a stringent price constraint and a stringent size constraint it's a bit of a shame that it looks like the kid who got bullied in class as opposed to the hero it actually is but there shouldn't be a reason not to at least consider it it generally is the most amazing boring smartphone i've ever used do you know what's not boring though dashlane an app whose entire goal is to make the internet easier so you've probably been told at some point that the internet is an unsafe place that you're constantly at risk of being hacked and that you should make each of your account passwords not just different but also complex enough that they end up looking like this but who's gonna remember them that's what dashlane's for so you use your face id or your fingerprint and dashing will then be able to instantly autofill all your details your credit card info your personal info onto any site and compared to using something like google chrome's default autofill software one it's faster because it works literally whichever device you're using i could be autofilling something on google chrome on my pc but then i could pick up an iphone open a safari browser and still have the same details ready to go and two it is safer because instead of just remembering a password that you've created dashlane can auto-generate the best passwords for you so you can have every single one of your accounts completely locked down but at the same time all you'd ever need to access them is you so i've left a special link in the description down below it's actually free to use on your first device if you go to dashlane.com boss but there is a premium version if you want to use it on all devices and if you go through this link and use the code boss then that will be 50 off okay to see my last video about an instagram story that can crash your phone click here and to see the video before that i'm going to leave that one up here thank you so much for watching my name is aaron this is mr who's the boss and i'll catch you in the next one

Channel: Mrwhosetheboss

Views: 2,564,768

Rating: 4.9422803 out of 5

Keywords: zenfone 8, zenfone 8 review, zenfone 8 camera, android, tech, smartphone, iphone, best small phone, best phone

Id: XfpMPZTyNQI

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Wed May 12 2021