Asus Zenfone 2 ZE551ML (2GB RAM, Full HD, 16GB, 1.8GHz)

BUYERS BEWARE I bought an asus zenfone-2 couple of months back, from the first day it was having several issues like call drops, recurrent freezing, reboot on its own. One day the phone suddenly stopped getting charged so I decided to go to asus repair centre… Though I was busy that day I was forced to stay back because they wanted to make sure there is no customer induced damage and they told me it was supposed to be done in front of customer, so they removed the back cover, opened up the back panel in front of me and had an extensive examination in front of me, and then they said that since there is no customer induced damage it is covered under warranty, then they took out a printed charge sheet wrote their inspection and diagnosis and signed it and gave it to me,(RMA NO – INYM580128) and I was promised it will be repaired soon. For one week the phone was in their custody and after one week they suddenly called me up and told me phone has suffered water damage, so warranty will not be given, I was dumbstruck to hear this and then I went to the repair centre and they opened the back panel again and the inside was splashed with water, seems like something done purposefully, and when I told him this was not the condition when you opened it in front of me at the time of submission. The guy got angry and retorted “ I don’t know anything, just take away your phone from here, I don’t have any responsibility ” I was taken aback by the reply and to be frank I was a bit scared. I just ran away from there called up the customer service and explained everything in detail, but even they are not ready to acknowledge their mistake and was telling me to pay up. WHAT ABOUT THE CHARGESHEET GIVEN TO ME AFTER OPENING AND EXAMINING THE BACK PANEL AND BACK COVER RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME, IT WAS GIVEN AFTER THOROUGH EXAMINATION AND THERE WAS NO TRACE OF ANY WATER DAMAGE, AND AFTER ONE WEEK IN THEIR CUSTODY THE INSIDE HAS BEEN SPLASHED WITH WATER. IF THEY COULD AT LEAST GIVE THE PHONE BACK IN THE CONDITION IN WHICH I GAVE THEM I WOULD HAVE REPAIRED IT FROM OTHER CENTRE BUT I JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH THAT PHONE, THE INSIDE HAS BEEN SPLASHED WITH WATER, I DON’T KNOW WHETHER IT IS PURPOSEFUL OR ACCIDENTAL. ANYWAY I LOST MY MONEY AND MY PHONE AND DEFINITELY I DON’T TRUST THESE ASUS PEOPLE ANY MORE. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT NO ONE ELSE WILL FALL PREY TO THIS COMPANY’S PRODUCTS AND IRRESPONSIBLE SERVICE.

I have been seeing a lot of negative reviews about this phone Zenfone 2. I own 4 GB RAM, 32 GB 2.3 GHz version, and let me tell u honestly, the phone is decent and is very good for its price.Let me clarify the issues raised by most of the dissatisfied people:- n1. Excessive Heating while charging:- This phone uses fast charging technology which can charge yr phone fully within1.5 hr!.It uses a 2.1 A charger. So some amount of body heating is normal. Even Redmi Note heats up in the same way( I have one). n2. Bad Rear Camera. So untrue!. the camera is very very good. It comes with so many modes and gives you so much freedom to select your shot.. u will realize only when u buy it. If people are photographically challenged, one can't help them.Yes, Zoom quality is not exceptional as it is only digital zoom. for this price, don't ask for moon! n3. Poor Battery Performance. People who have complained haven't mentioned under what circumstances they have used the phone. That is, with wifi continuously on or with brightness at full etc. Let me give you the correct input.. Without wifi on but with 3G always on , with brightness at 70% and auto brightness on, this battery lasts full 20 hours with moderate usage of internet. With continuous wifi on, it lasts 10- 12 hrs with heavy usage of data. In ultra saving mode,overnight idle consumption is just 1-2% and in optimized mode its just about 4-6%. In my Redmi Note, the battery performance is little better, but the point to be noted is Redmi is HD and this phone is FHD. One of my friend has HTC M8. Its battery also lasts about same. Hence battery is very good. Ignore peoples' crib about the battery. n4. Excessive Bloat ware. Again so untrue. Please note that Zen UI is heavily tweaked. It has many apps of its own which are meant for versatile usage. Only unsolicited apps I found were trip-adviser,, zenio, amazon kindle and 50+ games. rest all very useful, that is if u know how to use them. n5. Excessive RAM usage. 4 GB RAM is great, But any time about 1.5- 1.8 GB free RAM is available which is more than necessary for any fast processing activity. Just because it has 4 GB RAM, to expect all of it to be available is so stupid. More over, it has a great app called Auto Start Manager which is akin to Greenify. It allows u t o control which app to run in background and which one to go to hibernate. nnI have not highlighted any of its unique features such as 4 GB RAM and Intel processor and all. U have already read them in other reviews. I just wanted to inform u about the complaints by many users due to half baked knowledge. This phone surely doesn't deserve any of them. nnIf u r looking for a decent phone at a very reasonable price...just go for it. I give full 5 stars. I had zenfone 5 also. There I gave only 4 stars due to its poor battery. Here all the shortcomings of ZF5 have been looked into. Hence 5 Stars. nnUPDATE TO MY REVIEW ( 04 Jun 15). I am sorry, my review of this product giving 5 stars was not so mature. Now after using the phone for one month, I have come to the conclusion that the phone is full of bugs! I will explain. n1. Battery drain. Initially, the battery was decent. But after update, the battery drain has become a big headache. Full charge lasts about 8 hrs. Internet is full of battery complaints. nn2. Audio lag while playing video. This is a horrible problem. I am just not able to enjoy the video due to audio video sync issue. if u stop the video and re-run, it becomes ok. Many people have complained. See Zentalk page. n3. Call drop. Call drops frequently. Antenna sensitivity is not up to the mark. This I can say with confidence because I stay in an area where network strength is a bit tricky. I had a karbonn earlier which had this network issue. But my Redmi note is excellent. This phone again is weak in network strength. ( Both Redmi note and Asus have same airtel connection). n4. Misc complaints. I have read many complaints about no direct usb connectivity to the PC, PC link and file share not working, heat up isues, having to do many software tweaks such as system cache cleaning by a complicated process etc... nOverall, I can say, the phone has been released without developing the OS properly. The phone is a beast spec-wise and performance wise. But with a battery lasting just about 6-7 hours and a lagging audio video and host of other problems, this just proves one thing, Asus may be a giant in hardware, but they are still dwarfs as far as software is concerned i certainly do not recommend it now.nUPDATE AS ON 18 JUN 15. Yes, this phone had many bugs. But Asus is sincerely trying to address them. We receive updates once in every 3-4 days. Most of the bugs have been resolved. For the commitment of Asus to address the problems of consumers and the performance of this beast of a phone, I add 2 more stars to 4.