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 zenfone8 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 USB-C 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 generics 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 The 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 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 one plus 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 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 any more 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 the ultra-performance we're talking 770 000-ish on the latest a 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 doesn't feel distinctly different from 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 a 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 the 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 a 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 a 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 that 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 the 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 are 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 to 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 one plus 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 one plus 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 was 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 the 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 than if you were only going to have two lenses on your the phone then it should be these two lenses a couple of things that do need work
though are one of 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 stretch your hands out a 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 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 generally is the most amazing boring smartphone I've
ever used do you know what's not boring though dashlane an app whose entire the 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 auto-filling
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...
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