Facebook rolled out live video streaming for its users on 6th April 2016, followed by Instagram in the form of stories later that year.We are aware that most people prefer to use filters or do a little editing while posting photos on social networks to look better. In the case of Live videos, you will not be able to do add filters to look better. Keeping this point in mind and to make use of the craze for Live Videos/Stories in social networks, Asus launched the Zenfone Live in India on 24th May 2017 dedicated to people who do live videos more. The most striking feature of Zenfone Live is it has Live Beautification Mode which makes you look more beautiful and fair during live videos.

Specifications of Asus ZenFone Live

• Design: Premium-crafted metallic finish with 2.5D arc glass
• Light weight: 120g
• Display: 5-inch High Definition (1280×720) IPS display
• Camera: Front Camera – World’s 1st Live Streaming, Real-time beautification technology, 5MP + LED front flash; Rear Camera – 13 Megapixel PixelMaster camera ƒ/2.0 aperture
• Dual MEMS microphones for clearer voice quality
• Performance: Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 Quad-Core Processor
• GPU: Adreno 305
• Memory: 2GB RAM, 16GB ROM (MicroSD to 128GB)
• Battery: 2650mAh Li-ion battery (non-removable)
• OS: Android 6.0 with ZenUI 3.0

Review of Asus ZenFone Live

We got Gold Variant of the Model. Zenfone Live comes in 3 color variants: Pink, Navy Black and Shimmer Gold. What comes with the box:

• Handset
• SIM Tray Ejector
• Charger with USB Cable
• Manuals and Warranty Card

Asus ZenFone Live Design

The first impression of Zenfone Live makes you feel that it is so light-weight thanks to its less battery. The design looks similar to Zenfone 3S Max and being a 5.2 inch, its is easy and good to hold and keep it in your pockets. It has  3.5mm headphone jack on the top, USB Slot on the bottom with speaker vents. It comes with a 720p HD display. Hybrid SIM Tray and Volume rockers to its left and Power button to its right. It has LED Flash and 5 MP Front Camera on the opposite sides of the earpiece. The proximity sensor resides near the front camera and notification LED lies underneath somewhere near the side of LED Flash. The back of the phone flaunts the 13 Megapixel Camera with flash. The navigation buttons do not have backlit, no visible in the dark.

The design of the phone is simple and not so elegant. The so-called premium metallic design is prone to scratches when it is placed on not-so-smooth surfaces. Though I took a lot of care regarding this issue, I have no idea where scratches came from on the rear. The front part of the phone got no issues and is fine with the 2.5D glass surface.

Talking about the Hybrid SIM Tray: 2 Nano SIMs or 1 Micro SD Card with Nano SIM.

Asus ZenFone Live Specifications

Zenfone Live’s claims it is the world’s #1 Phone with Live Beautification technology which blemishes your face in real-time. As the name claims, it is built for making live videos on social media platforms. With a good front camera, it sports real good microphone tech: Dual MEMS microphones for clearer char & less noise (One on the top near the earpiece and another on the bottom).The 5-Magnet Speakers are loud enough. It has LED Flash on the front which helps in capturing live videos in a bad light.

Talking about the non-“live” specifications, it comes with Snapdragon 400 chipset which is too old (2013) working at 1.5 GHz. It comes with 2 GB RAM and 16 GB ROM,( coughs ), out of which 6.09GB is system reserved, user gets 9.91 GB. Yeah, it is very easy to run out of space.

Asus ZenFone Live Camera

The BeautyLive App pops up every time you try to make a live video, (You can select it from the app menu as well. Currently it offers beautified live streaming for Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube). It offers beautification for both front and rear cameras. Regarding the front camera, when you take selfies I recommend not to mess with beauty settings of the camera. I don’t even remember changing settings of the Front Cam but it did really over blemish my face, made my eyes darker, felt like a being a cartoon character after I saw the photo.  Yeah, the beauty settings used on the front camera reflects after the photo is clicked and doesn’t show on real-time. Later I switched the settings to default, it’s fine thereafter.

The Zenfone Camera comes with a total of 12 different camera modes: Real Time Beautification / Low light / Selfie / HDR PRO / Super Resolution/ Night / Effect / Panorama / Time lapse / Children / QR code / Auto.

The performance of Rear Camera isn’t so great. The focusing in the camera is fair and the performance of the Camera during nights becomes worse. The camera doesn’t offer much resolution, goes grainy with a little zoom. It offers 720p video recording and auto focus is absent. Video Stabilization is okay.

On a whole, the camera is good for normal users, may need some effort sometimes.

Asus ZenFone Live Performance

The ZenFone Live comes with Snapdragon 400 Processor with 1.5GHz and 2GB RAM. The RAM Management is good and in case you want to move from one app to another, to free up space the ZenUI optimizes the background apps for the app you’re using. And switching back again, the app restarts again. On a whole, I say RAM Management is forced to have free space. The performance of the phone is just okay, does the job. The graphic processing in phones is bad even with small games like Clash of Clans.

And during Live Videos, the phone works decently. No lags or issues are found during live streaming. The calling experience is good. Loudspeaker is good and the microphone is excellent. The phone rarely heated and it can be ignored as the heat isn’t too much. It comes with Marshmallow 6.0 and it came with an update later which improved the performance a little. The ZenUI is decent with minimal bloatware.

Asus ZenFone Live Battery

Asus ZenFone Live’s battery is mediocre, comes with 2650 mAh. It gave us an average screen-on time of 5 hours, ( Highest being 6 hours and lowest being 4h37min ). The more games/apps you use, battery drains faster. It takes 3 hours to completely charge, charges fastly up to 60-70% and takes time to completely fill later.

Final Words

The Zenfone Live priced at Rs.9,999/- is aimed to people who ( live on social media ???? ) do a lot of live videos, and just because you cannot add filters and beautification in live, you need to buy this phone. That’s literally what Asus meant! It claims that this Live Beautification they introduced is unique and no other phone can copy this. I guess they’ve patented this. Though this is a great feature and a phone is marketed only on the basis of this feature, I feel it can be priced somewhere near Rs.6k to 7k. Apart from live videos, the phone doesn’t excel in any other department.

In case you do live videos on daily basis and you want the skin blemishing effects on live, you can use this as your secondary device. I don’t recommend using this as your primary device cause the 9GB of usable internal memory may not be sufficient.

Pros

• Unique Live Beautification
• Lightweight Design

Cons

• No Fingerprint
• Bad Performance
• Bad value for money