How To Disable System Update On Asus Zenfone 3

Our Verdict

The Asus Zenfone viii is a solid flagship phone at a sub-flagship price, though inevitably there are compromises: there'south no telephoto lens or wireless charging, and information technology misses out on its predecessor'southward novel flip camera that let the rear lenses rotate forward to accept selfie shots. You can still get that camera in the limited-release Asus Zenfone viii Flip, but the regular Zenfone 8 delivers top-tier specs at the virtually affordable cost since the OnePlus 6T.

For

Pinnacle-level specs
Small form factor
Respectable camera adequacy

Against

No telephoto lens
Middling bombardment life
No wireless charging

TechRadar Verdict

The Asus Zenfone 8 is a solid flagship phone at a sub-flagship toll, though inevitably in that location are compromises: in that location's no telephoto lens or wireless charging, and information technology misses out on its predecessor's novel flip camera that permit the rear lenses rotate forward to accept selfie shots. You tin can nevertheless get that camera in the limited-release Asus Zenfone 8 Flip, but the regular Zenfone 8 delivers acme-tier specs at the most affordable price since the OnePlus 6T.

Pros

+
Summit-level specs
+
Minor form factor
+
Respectable camera capability

Cons

-
No telephoto lens
-
Middling battery life
-
No wireless charging

Two-minute review

The Asus Zenfone 8 represents a image shift for a flagship telephone – not to higher prices and more features, but to greater affordability, with essential specs and stiff cameras. It'south the kind of device phone brands like OnePlus used to release, and it's just as welcome.

Greater affordability inevitably comes with compromises though, and the Zenfone 8 misses out on out the feature that made its predecessor stand up out: its flip photographic camera, which enabled the Zenfone vii to have rear-facing and selfie photos with the aforementioned set of lenses.

You can nonetheless get this novel camera functionality, simply but in a larger specialty version of the telephone – the aptly-named Zenfone eight Flip, which will be a limited release, price more, and come in a single RAM and storage configuration.

Asus is envisioning the Zenfone viii to be the standard version of the phone, with high-end specs in a variety of configurations – a top-tier Snapdragon 888 chipset and up to 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage – at a very competitive price. That means consumers comparison the Zenfone 8 to other flagship phones will accept to go on board with other compromises Asus has made – in that location are merely ii rear cameras (there's no telephoto lens), and this is a smaller telephone with an under-6-inch screen.

Those two cameras are impressive enough – there's a 64MP main shooter and 12MP ultrawide camera, and a front-facing photographic camera in a punch-hole. As we've seen with previous Asus phones, these cameras perform well in adept lite, although they lag behind other flagship phones in depression-light and night photography.

As mentioned, Asus' new flagship phone is a small device, with blueprint considerations tailored to one-handed use that include a alpine and narrow design and refined ane-handed interface fashion. Its size makes it something of a rarity among phones with flagship specs, rivaling the iPhone 12 mini and lower-specced Google Pixel 5 in what information technology offers.

Otherwise the phone inherits a lot from its predecessor and other Asus phones, from the 120Hz screen refresh rate and ZenUI OS overlay to gaming modes and a iii.5mm headphone jack. And while its 4,000mAh battery capacity won't turn heads, information technology's all the same enough to go on the phone going through a twenty-four hours.

All in all, that makes the Zenfone 8 a compelling and powerful telephone that's smaller than a lot of the competition – which may suit some consumers more than than others who desire more than screen area to watch media or play games. The Zenfone 8 Flip does have a bigger 6.67-inch brandish, plus the aforementioned flip camera adequacy, although as mentioned it costs more, and availability is limited.

Zenfone eight price and release date

The Zenfone 8 launched on May 12 and starts at €499, and has gone on sale on Asus' United states store for $629, though it's already discounted downwards to the cost we expected of $599 (effectually £425 / AU$769) for 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. You can bump that upward to 256GB for $699 (effectually £505 / AU$929) in the Usa shop, but it's not selling any variants with higher RAM.

The Zenfone viii is also available in configurations up to 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage for an expected $799 (around £565 / AU$1,025). The Zenfone 8 comes in two colors: a matte Obsidian Black and silvery-framed, white-colored Horizon Argent.

The Zenfone viii Flip volition accept a far more limited release, and Asus has confirmed that it won't be coming out in the US. In Europe information technology volition retail for €799, which is around $970 / £690 / AU$1,240).

Those prices are similar to what we saw for the Zenfone 7 and Zenfone 7 Pro, although the Zenfone eight seems nominally cheaper than its predecessor, likely attributable to its static camera and simpler design. That makes the Zenfone 8 a potentially tempting suggestion, undercutting phones like the Google Pixel 5 and OnePlus ix by around $100, and the Samsung Milky way S21 by $200. While those phones have some advantages (notably their cameras), the Zenfone 8 does characteristic top specs at a very competitive price.

Asus Zenfone 8 — (Prototype credit: Future)

Design

The Zenfone 8'south design won't turn many heads, but it packs those impressive specs into a meaty bundle that's more or less usable with ane hand. These days, that'due south novel – it'due south not a phone for users who want more than screen expanse to watch media or who need larger text, just for those who want a smaller handset the Zenfone 8 is one of the few options with flagship-level specs and end.

In that location are few phones in this niche, with the Zenfone viii (148 x 68.5 x 8.9mm) coming in at roughly the same size as the Google Pixel 5 (144.seven x 70.4 x 8mm) while the iPhone 12 mini (131.five x 64.2 ten 7.4mm) is noticeably shorter in length, narrower in width, and thinner than either. Compare that to phones like the Asus ROG Phone 5 (172.8 x 77.iii 10 10.3mm), which is so wide and alpine that it's hard to achieve a thumb more than 2-thirds of the mode beyond its 6.8-inch brandish when holding the telephone one-handed.

The Zenfone 8 has a polish matte glass dorsum with a photographic camera block in the upper-left corner, and rounded edges that curve into the aluminum frame, making for a solid and classy feel. While the phone is a little thick at near 9mm, the sides are wider towards the back and narrower toward the forepart drinking glass, which makes it slightly easier to wrap your fingers around the phone. It's easier to encounter this in our hands-on photos than information technology is for u.s. to depict a bit tough to explain, but it's a nice design consideration that encourages one-handed use.

The phone otherwise has a pretty standard design, with a book rocker towards the summit of the right border and a metallic bluish lock button below this. Gone is the thick lock push button with built-in fingerprint sensor found on the Zenfone 7, equally Asus has finally implemented an in-screen fingerprint sensor in the Zenfone 8. On the height of the handset are a microphone on the right and iii.5mm headphone jack, and on the bottom is a fundamental USB-C port with a speaker to the right, a microphone to the left, and a SIM slot to the left of that (there'south no microSD capability).

During our conference, Asus took fourth dimension to point out the phone's two speakers – a 10 ten 12mm ane at the superlative and a larger 12 x 16mm one at the bottom that's the same size as the speaker at the lesser of the Asus ROG Phone 5, though with a slightly smaller 1.0cc speaker box volume. It's unfair to compare the two handsets, as the latter, larger phone has forward-firing speakers while the Zenfone 8 has one in the earpiece and the other firing out of the bottom for less evenly-distributed sound. Suffice it to say that the Zenfone 8's speakers – tuned by Swedish audio visitor Dirac – put out a good volume, and we noticed more loftier and middle tones, although with some lows missing, compared to the sound from the Zenfone 7.

Zenfone 8 vs Zenfone 8 Flip

Before we dive deeper into the Zenfone 8, allow's go over the differences between it and the Zenfone 8 Flip. The biggest i is, of grade, the flip camera, which gives the Flip another telephoto lens and keeps the edge-to-edge front display articulate of notches or punch-holes.

While the Zenfone viii Flip essentially retains the aforementioned cameras as in the Zenfone 7 lineup, its flipping machinery does enable features beyond taking selfie photos or videos with the principal suite of rear cameras – for example you lot can hold the phone in mural and employ the flip activeness to take an automatic panorama. It's a scrap contemporary, but at that place's no denying that selfies taken with rear-facing shooters are superior to those taken with front-facing cameras.

With its 6.67-inch display, the 8 Flip is noticeably larger than the Zenfone eight with its 5.9-inch screen. But there is a curious divergence in terms of the refresh rate, with the smaller Zenfone 8's screen refreshing at 120Hz compared with the 8 Flip's at 90Hz. It's likely not plenty for anyone to observe other than in a side-past-side comparison, but information technology's still an interesting distinction, suggesting that the 8 Flip merely inherited the Zenfone 7'southward screen and 90Hz refresh rate wholesale. Both the Zenfone eight and 8 Flip take in-screen fingerprint sensors, however.

Both the Zenfone 8 and eight Flip pack a Snapdragon 888 chipset but dissimilar specs: while the 8 Flip comes in one configuration – 8GB RAM and 256GB storage – the standard Zenfone eight starts at 8GB RAM / 128GB, and caps out at 16GB RAM / 256GB. Neither phone offers expandable storage via microSD.

Display

The Zenfone eight has a 5.9-inch AMOLED brandish with a Total HD Plus (2400 x 1080) resolution. As we've mentioned, the screen features a 120Hz refresh rate for silky-smooth browsing, media viewing and gaming (for supported titles), besides as a 240Hz touch sampling rate that reads finger inputs 240 times per second for faster gaming inputs.

Compared to other 'small' flagship phones, the Zenfone 8'southward 5.9-inch screen has a very slightly smaller area than the half-dozen-inch Google Pixel 5, just as the Zenfone viii'south display is longer and thinner, information technology doesn't feel lacking. That's far more display expanse than the 5.4-inch iPhone 12 mini (especially considering that phone'south notch), and near comparable to the vi.i-inch screens on the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, though the Zenfone viii is noticeably thinner than either Apple flagship.

You can dial the Zenfone eight's 120Hz maximum refresh rate down to 90Hz or the standard 60Hz to save battery, although yous tin can't simply switch this in Settings > Display as you might expect. Instead, you'll have to caput to Settings > Bombardment > System Mode and select one of 5 options that balance operation and bombardment life (hint: choose 'Dynamic' to let you lot option which refresh rate you want in Display settings). It's a well-intentioned setup to requite users high-level overviews of what they want to prioritize, but it's nonetheless frustrating if you simply want to fiddle with settings one by 1.

The twenty:9 ratio display is tall and narrow, and while bigger thumbs might be able to stretch across its width when the phone is held one-handed, the elevation of the screen will be out of attain for everyone. The one-handed mode pushes everything on the screen down to the bottom half by default, only yous can customize that ceiling to whichever tiptop you'd prefer.

The on-screen picture quality is very good – information technology's fifty-fifty sharper than the iPhone 12 Pro'south screen in a side-past-side video exam, with practiced colors and brightness producing a picture that feels more true-to-life than the one on its predecessor, the Zenfone 7.

While having a smaller display makes the Zenfone eight's moving picture theoretically sharper than telephone screens with identical resolutions (Full Hd Plus), the color remainder is a existent differentiator between this phone and the contest, showing nuanced differences in hues betwixt adjacent just not identically-colored elements where other phone displays would blend them together.

In a start for the Zenfone line (though browbeaten to the punch by the ROG line), the Zenfone 8 has an in-brandish fingerprint sensor that works accurately and very rapidly. The phone can also be unlocked via facial recognition.

Cameras

The Zenfone viii has 2 rear cameras (main and ultra-wide) and one 12MP forepart-facing camera in a punch-pigsty in the front screen. While its predecessor packed a telephoto lens (as does the Zenfone eight Flip), the Zenfone 8 makes do without.

The 64MP f/1.8 chief photographic camera looks to be inherited intact from the Zenfone 7 Pro, downward to its Sony IMX686 sensor and optical image stabilization, and as well with the 12MP f/2.two ultra-broad camera and its Sony IMX363 sensor.

Daylight photos look very respectable, with good clarity in well-lit shots and plenty of item in up-close captures. Colors can look a little as well vibrant though, and the cameras start to struggle in lower light, losing clarity in dusk and twilight shots.

Performance

The Zenfone viii packs the best specs you'll find exterior of a gaming telephone, with a Snapdragon 888 processor, from 8GB to 16GB of RAM, and 128GB to 256GB of storage (although you can't expand on this as there's no microSD slot).

The phone we tested was packing the maximum specs, and wasn't slowed downward by any tasks we put it through, from coincidental browsing to media binging to gaming. The phone averaged a Geekbench 5 score of 3508, which is far below the comparably-specced Asus ROG five Pro (3678) and the OnePlus nine (3654), but above every phone released in 2020 except the iPhone 12 line.

The Zenfone 8 comes running Android 11 out of the box, with the latest version of Google'due south mobile Os featuring improved media controls, give-and-take prediction tools, and other features. The phone has Asus' ZenUI overlay, a make clean pare over the operating arrangement that mainly adds the Game Genie skin (featuring a menu for in-game options like tweaking performance and muting notifications), besides as offering settings that are more granular than on many Android phones, including the aforementioned System Modes to balance bombardment life, brandish refresh charge per unit, and other parameters.

Battery

The Zenfone 8 packs a four,000mAh battery, which is enough to power it through the day, although screen-intensive activities like watching media and playing games volition diminish the battery life at a quicker pace than on other phones. The diverse power-saving modes allow users to eke out more bombardment life by reducing brightness and screen refresh rate, turning off the always-on display, and managing other power-hungry settings.

There are also recharging settings inherited from the ROG 5, such equally reducing the charging cap to ninety% or 80% to prolong bombardment longevity, as well as scheduled charging to continue the battery at those caps while charging overnight – only topping it up to 100% right before a user'south wake-up alarm is scheduled to go off.

The phone comes with a 30W charger out of the box, which offers comparatively fast charging, although it's not quite to the level of the 60W charger that comes with the Asus ROG v. Still, the 30W charger juiced the telephone up to 32% in 15 minutes, 58% in xxx minutes, and seventy% in 45 minutes, and fully charged it in around an hour. Unfortunately, the Zenfone viii doesn't have wireless charging, like every previous Asus phone.

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David is now a mobile reporter at Cnet. Formerly Mobile Editor, Usa for TechRadar, he covered phones, tablets, and wearables. He notwithstanding thinks the iPhone 4 is the best-looking smartphone ever made. He'south nearly interested in technology, gaming and civilization – and where they overlap and change our lives. His current shell explores how our on-the-become beingness is afflicted by new gadgets, carrier coverage expansions, and corporate strategy shifts.