Asus announced that it’s camera-focused smartphone, the Asus Zenfone Zoom, is now available at B&H Photo Video, a large retailer of imaging products.
The Zenfone Zoom is a new twist to Asus’s moderately successful Zenfone line-up, this time with a much bigger focus on camera quality and especially its optical zoom capabilities. The main selling point of optical zoom over digital zoom is that you can zoom in on a picture without sacrificing nearly as much quality as you do with digital zoom.
The Zenfone Zoom brings 3x optical zoom and a 10-element lens for capturing sharper images made by Hoya, a Japanese optics company. The 13MP SmartFSI camera sensor is made by Panasonic and is paired with optical image stabilization (OIS) for blur-free photos. The device also comes with a 5MP front-facing camera.
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Asus Zenfone Zoom |
|---|---|
| Platform | Android 5.0 with ASUS ZenUI |
| Dimensions | 158.9 x 78.84 x 5 ~ 11.95 mm (W x D x H) |
| Weight | 185 g (with battery) |
| Processor | Intel Atom Quad Core Z3580 ( up to two cores at 2.3GHz), PowerVR G6430, with OpenGL 3.0 support |
| Memory | 4 GB LPDDR3 RAM |
| Storage Options | -64 GB eMMC Flash -5 GB free lifetime of ASUS WebStorage -100 GB free for two years of Google Drive storage |
| Memory slot | MicroSD card (up to 128 GB) |
| Modem | Intel 7262 |
| Connectivity | WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Bluetooth V4.0+EDR , NFC USB One Micro SIM card supporting 2G/3G/4G |
| Display | 5.5inches, Full HD 1920x1080/403 PPI,IPS Corning® Gorilla® Glass 4 |
| Battery | 3000 mAh Li-Polymer (non-removable) |
| Camera | 5MP front 13MP rear with 10-element Hoya lens |
Other specs for the Asus Zenfone Zoom include a 5.5” Full HD IPS display, a quad-core Intel Atom Z3580, 4 GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 64 GB of eMMC storage, support for microSD slot (up to 128 GB), LTE, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, NFC, and a 3,000mAh battery.
The device is sold with an older version of Android (version 5.0) along with the Asus ZenUI on top. It can be purchased exclusively from B&H Photo Video for $399.
Lucian Armasu is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware. You can follow him at @lucian_armasu.
