Asus Zenfone 3s Max

The 5,000mAh battery of course, is the mainstay of the ASUS ZenFone 3S Max. Before we get to that however, let us talk about what we think is the real highlight of the phone - its design. The ZenFone 3S Max rocks a 5.2-inch display covered with 2.5D curved glass. Encased in an aluminium alloy body, the handset looks rather nice with its rounded corners and curved rear. The in-hand feel is great, and looking at how compact and lightweight (175g) the phone is, you won’t be able to guess it packs such a powerful battery. The 3S Max has its fingerprint scanner embedded into a physical home button at the front, and offers onscreen navigation controls instead of the capacitive keys usually found on ASUS phones. This means that the 3S Max actually has two home buttons. That apart, the placement of ports and controls is standard. Yet another feather in the device’s cap is the fact that it runs Android Nougat out of the box. Despite ASUS’ staple ZenUI that comes with a ton of bloatware and comes across as an overwhelming, heavy skin, you do get additional features such as Nougat’s split-window mode that allows you to run two compatible apps simultaneously. That apart, you get tons of other features such as a variety of battery saving modes, support for themes, a variety of screen off gestures and loads of customisation options.Coming to the battery performance, the 3S Max sticks to its promise and doesn’t disappoint. With regular usage, you can eke out a couple of days from it, so even if your usage is heave, you can rest assured it’ll last you the whole day with ease. Our battery drain test lasted 16 hours, which is a great, if not exceptional result. Also, the phone boasts reverse charging, so you can use it as a power bank to charge other gadgets via an OTG adapter - always a useful feature to have.

Unfortunately, the list of negatives is a tad longer than the positives for the 3S Max. Packing a powerful battery is nice, but since the 3S Max lacks fast charging, it takes a while to juice up. Expect to charge it fully in a little over 3 and a half hours.Under the hood, the phone hides a MediaTek 6750 processor, 3 gigs of RAM and 32GB storage (about 23.5GB available). We can’t say we were impressed with the performance, as the phone lags occasionally, even when using mundane apps. We also saw some random app crashes, but it’s the sluggishness that takes the usage experience down a few notches. Intensive games like Asphalt 8 run smoothly though, and the phone doesn’t heat up a lot.The HD resolution on the 5.2-inch screen is also a bit of a bummer. It’s bright enough, but the viewing angles aren’t that great and the colours aren’t top notch. Also, most competing smartphones in this price range offer full HD displays… so this could be another deal breaker. As far as the shooters are concerned, you get a 13MP primary and an 8MP secondary shooter. The camera app is loaded to the brim with features, and you also get ASUS’ proprietary PixelMaster tech that does wonders in low light. The wizardry still works, especially in low light, but overall, the results can be a bit of a hit and miss. Daylight shots look a tad overexposed at times, lacking detail and punchiness. Close ups look good for the most part, and HDR works reasonably well too. Low light shots can be iffy as well. Here are a few samples from the primary camera.