ASUS Zenfone 3 Ultra – Hands On & Photo Samples

ASUS Zenfone 3 Ultra – Hands On & Photo Samples

Today saw the arrival of my ASUS Zenfone 3 Ultra, in keeping with the theme of reviewing extra large tablets I mean mobiles. The Zenfone 3 Ultra is as big as they come with a 6.8″ 1080p screen. Yep, it’s almost a 7″ tablet.

Specs are good, a full metal unibody, 23MP camera with OIS+DIS. Qualcomm Snapdragon 652 (8 cores 1.8Mhz max) CPU with Adreno 510 GPU, 4GB of RAM and a 64GB ROM. It’s running Android 6.0.1 with ZenUI 3 as the skin. Here is my unboxing video, first look, and first impressions.

So far I’m impressed, it looks great. But ASUS sure do pack a whole heap of bloatware in your face and try to force you to install all sorts of crap you don’t need or want. Lucky most of it can be removed and disabled, but you need a good 20 minutes to get through removing all the crap! (Samsung is just as bad)

While I’m enjoying my Mi Max with it’s 6.4″ screen, the 23MP OIS camera, and better build is what lured me into buying this one to review. Here are some snaps from that 23MP Sony 4:3 sensor.

The two similar images are HDR on and HDR off. The last three are low light shots. The last being a depth of field shot.

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Finally as requested some low light photos. If you zoom in you’ll see a lot of details is captured, but there is a bit of oversharping.

Low Light ASUS Zenfone 3 Photo Samples:

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Video tech reviewer and tech blogger. I have a huge interest in the latest tech, tablets, laptops, mobiles, drones, and even e-scooters. Active in the tech community since 2008 days of the Omnia i900 Windows phone. Samsungi8910omnia.com, Samsunggalaxysforums.com founder from way back.

21 Comments

  1. had this phone for about three weeks now and I absolutely love it. It is exactly what I wanted/needed. The Camera on this thing is suburb.

    Thanks for the excellent reviews.

  2. Hi Chris! I’ve been enjoying my Ultra for a few weeks now and have really struggled with the camera. I came from a Samsung Galaxy s7 Edge which had a fantastic camera and the Ultra’s definitely been challenging. Do you have any tips for the Depth of Field setting (seems like nothing is happening when I try it) or just camera tips for it in general? This is my first Asus phone so I’m new to the game! Thanks.

  3. Man, almost $800 on Amazon right now. Ouch.

    • Because of limited stock, it will lower and setting in a month or so.

  4. By the way people, hands down this has some of the best and loudest speakers ever hear on a mobile phone. Really good, best most tablets, well apart from the Surface Pro 4.

  5. Hi Chris, funny you should have the Xiaomi mi max as I’ve been looking at that and the Nubia z11 max (which I’m leaning towards). I never considered the Asus phone though, what are your early impressions with the Xiaomi, I.e camera and audio? Need serious help deciding as I want to order in the next few days.

    Cheers
    Rob

  6. I actually went to ‘THE’ Asus shop in the Syntrend Building in Taipei last week, on Monday 1st August. They had precisely ONE Asus Zenfone 3 Ultra there, just for demonstration, not for sale ( http://www.chinamobiles.org/threads/asus-zenfone-3-zenfone-3-deluxe-zenfone-3-max.49693/page-3#post-701604 ). They said they will get some for sale on Wednesday 3rd. They said that all of Taiwan will get 200 devices at first, that is the amount of the first charge. The Asus Signature shop in Taipei will get 30 of them, all of them of course already reserved. I put my name down on the reservation list for the Zenfone 3 Ultra in that shop and might get lucky in the beginning of September. Considering this, I find it utmost amazing that you had your device even before the people in Taiwan could get it.

    • That hard to get, I heard from the seller it was very limited supply. Well, I had to pay a huge premium to get hold of this so early.

  7. Thanks Chris! good one. What’s up with those big black borders present everywhere now? I saw it for the first time in the MI5.

  8. Does it list the exact bands anywhere on the box or manual? I don’t trust what the sellers list, since everything is a copy/paste job.

    • Not on the box. Just says it supports 4G UTMS, TDD LTE etc etc.

  9. Hi Chris,
    Yes, ASUS claim that their ZenUI adds over a thousand improvements to Android! Not sure if that includes the bloatware though. 🙂

    Terry

    • I think it must include bloatware! It’s a joke how much the added to the phone, it’s my biggest complaint so far.

      • I’d love to see totally STOCK Android Roms for both this AND the MiMax.. the latter seems to be stuck on MIU and its not my preference

      • That seems to be a big complaint with every review of every ASUS device I have read so far! ASUS, take note, follow Google’s Nexus lead and cut down on the unnecessary bloatware! 🙂

  10. Where did you order the phone? I spent a considerable time today searching the web for it.

    • Hi, it get it so early on before the rest of the world (well after Taiwan) I had to use an eBay seller here http://goo.gl/C3c62i to import it. If you can wait a few months you’ll save a good $200.

      • Ouch, that’s quite a price premium!
        I could buy an honor note 8 *and* a mi max and have change left over!

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