The ASUS ZenFone 7 Pro Review: The Triple Flip-Camera
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 1, 2020 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Asus
- Smartphones
- ZenFone 7
- ZenFone 7 Pro
Battery Life
The ZenFone 7’s come with a 5000mAh battery which is above-norm compared to other devices on the market. Together with what should be an efficient display and the Snapdragon 865 SoC, we hope the ZenFone 7 Pro to perform quite well in the battery tests.
In the web-browsing test, the phone reached “only” 10.95h when in the 90Hz display mode. I say “only”, as given the phone’s very large battery capacity I had expected a little more out of the device. In fact, it lags behind the S20 Ultra which also houses a 5000mAh battery, but runs its screen at 120Hz.
In PCMark, we likewise see some rather disappointing results. At 60Hz, the phone lasted “only” 10.21h which is far below the expectations of a device with such a larger calibre battery. It’s quite a contrast to the ROG Phone III’s 16.33h runtime even though the devices should fare similarly at this refresh-rate, with an only 17% difference in battery capacity.
Likewise, I’m rerunning the 90Hz battery test to verify some results and issues I ran into.
Overall, the ZenFone 7’s battery life was quite odd and behaving quite below expectations. I’m not sure as to why this is happening. It’s true that the ZenFone is tuned to be more aggressive in performance than the ROG Phone III, but the delta in battery life between the two devices is too great, and comparatively to other 1080p 90Hz S865 devices it also doesn’t do as well. The OnePlus 8 with a 4300mAh battery clearly outpaces the ZenFone 7 without too much trouble.
Battery Health & Care
ASUS had put what I deem to be a quite unusual amount of focus on battery health of the device, and I found this to be a breath of fresh air amongst a crowd of vendors who seemingly just want to one-up themselves with absurd high charging speeds.
Beyond allowing for the option to disable fast-charging altogether from the phone side, and having smart scheduled charging features which allow you for example to only top-off the phone to 100% only in the mornings before you wake up, ASUS goes even further and even allows you to artificially limit the maximum state of charge the phone charges to.
Limiting the maximum state of charge level to 80% instead of 100% for example claims to reduce the battery capacity degradation over time by half. The above graph and data showcase the capacity degradation over charge cycles on the ZenFone 6 with 18W fast-charging.
ASUS deemed all these options and features to be beneficial to the customer and his device over prolonged usage – and the battery on the ZenFone 7 is even specially designed with a thicker anode-cathode separator to allow for faster charging and better capacity retention.
ASUS had put what I deem to be a quite unusual amount of focus on battery health of the device, and I found this to be a breath of fresh air amongst a crowd of vendors who seemingly just want to one-up themselves with absurd high charging speeds.
The phone features 30W USB-PD charging and features a corresponding (PPS compatible) charger in the box by default, however they don’t hide that faster charging does degrade your battery faster.
I’ve never seen a vendor be this transparent and forthright about the negatives of fast-charging and battery degradation in general, and I applaud ASUS for it.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
31 Comments
View All Comments
PeachNCream - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Introducing the ASUS ZenFone 7 with twice as much gimmicky camera market differentiator at a cost of functionality as last year's model!RollingCamel - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
I would suggest a revisit the camera performance for a number of phones while using GCAM. Should be an interesting read.Here is the link for Zenphone 7/pro GCAM files.
https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/p/gcam-...
skavi - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
i was hoping to see the panorama mechanism in action. that’s a really cool idea.eastcoast_pete - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Thanks Andrei! With video recording being a key interest of mine, the lackluster performance disqualifies this phone for me already. Too bad ASUS spent all their engineering time on gadgetry, and not on making the camera function what it could and should have been.FredFlog - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
I know ASUS is a Taiwanese company but does anyone know exactly in which country this phone is produced / assembled / made?Kashif ali - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Sir I need Asus Zenfone v 520 kl unitldx00 - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
I think Asus are losing their way. They are not a premium manufacturer for 2 very important reasons. Their software and their support is terrible. I have had many Asus products but I am now seriously going off them. Their hardware is always great, I mean really good, but their software is often buggy and most importantly of all, is never maintained for as long as you might expect and is often abandoned way too quickly, even by budget manufacturer standards, never mind a premium one. At least unlock the bootloader or something so we can keep using the products. I know they have done this for some products but it's too random which products get it and which not. One of the most horrible examples come from their tablets, specifically the Z500KL which I own (zenpad 3S 10 LTE). It was a very expensive tablet, over £300 at the time and was vertigo made and functions well to this day, after 3.5 years of heavy use, yet it shipped with android 6 which was already basically obsolete, then it got 1 android version update to 7 and that was it... Almost no security updates either. They have released a bootloader unlock for the Z500M, the non LTE version, but nothing for the Z500KL. With this kind of attitude, they will never be accepted as a premium phone manufacturer. I have to say though that I do like the flat screen on a top end device. I hate the curved screens and if it wasn't for the software and the ridiculous price, this could well be an attractive set of phones. Also, no headphone jack. Pity...gutsonator - Saturday, September 5, 2020 - link
One of the main issues I have with Asus phones is software rather than hardware. Phone runs fine until you get an update that screws up a major issue like sound or display or even brick your phone completely like what happens to my zenfone 4.Also Asus after zenfone 4 started to cut cost on the OS but removing the customization features they used to provide
gamer1000k - Tuesday, September 22, 2020 - link
I've got a Zenfone 6 and was excited to read about the 7 until I read that the headphone jack was removed, and the price went up 50%. Hard pass.itsjustaprankbro - Wednesday, January 6, 2021 - link
I don't get all these salty comments. I bought a Zenfone 7 Pro and I LOVE this device. The phone feels extra premium. The camera is great. The performance is superb. Sound is great, call quality is great, signal/reception/GPS is great. Everything is awesome about it, I really have NO clue why people are complaining all this much.Before this phone I've had a OnePlus 7 Pro, Mate 20, then a Note 10+, then a Xiaomi Mi 10T Pro. This is the best phone (both software and hardware wise) out all of them, hands down.
No, ASUS have not paid me a cent to make this post. I just truly believe this phone is awesome. I wish they'd have used IPS LCD on this phone as well (just like on the 6), but whatever, it works.