The ASUS ZenFone 2 Review
by Brandon Chester on May 26, 2015 8:00 AM ESTNAND Performance
While it's not disclosed by manufacturers, the speed of NAND on a smartphone is a very important aspect of overall smartphone performance. It has an impact on how long cameras can do burst capture, and how well the phone performs when apps are running both in the foreground and the background. To evaluate the NAND performance of the ZenFone 2 I've run it through both of our internal storage benchmarks. Because our iOS benchmark only supports a single IO thread, we'll be using our older storage benchmark alongside the newer Androbench 4.0 test for the foreseeable future.
In our original single threaded storage benchmark the ZenFone 2 is decidedly average in its performance. In every case it's either slightly above or below the median result on our charts. It's important to keep in mind that this test puts devices like the Galaxy S6 with its UFS storage at a disadvantage, as its NAND can make use of several IO threads due to the use of a command queue.
In our newer AndroBench 4.0 storage test we see that the ZenFone 2 ends up falling farther behind the other devices that we've run through the test. In the sequential read test it's not the slowest device, but that's only due to the Nexus 6 being extremely far behind every other device as a result of Google's full disk encryption. In the sequential write and random read tests it's comes behind the HTC One (M9), although to a very small degree in the latter test. Random writes are where it really stumbles, with a speed that's less than half of the next slowest device.
I'm not sure whether I can attribute it to the enormous amount of RAM that the 4GB version of the ZenFone 2 can use as a cache, but I never noticed any issues with performance as a result of IO operations being run either by the app I was using or by another application in the background. Even when updating applications, performance remained consistent.
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ketacdx - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link
The only apps I've had that wont work are some games. I couldn't get Jet Grind Radio or Chaos Rings GP installed. Otherwise everything worked and I've installed a lot.thetuna - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link
You really should compare this to the Alcatel Idol 3 (also a cheap 5.5" 1080 phone).It's an incredible phone for the $200 I paid, and I'd say it's still a deal at the current price of $250.
tipoo - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link
I'd go with the ZP2 over that though. The GPU performance on that was far worse iirc, and the whole 8 A53 cores thing is dumb. Does get better battery life though.coolied - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link
And it has the advantage on using a Snapdragon SoC, so it should be more compatible.tipoo - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link
What apps have you seen not work on x86? Most are cross compiled, and most of the rest run fine on binary translation.zodiacfml - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link
Should have been the Nexus. Yet, personally, I just got the N5 last year.One criticism is the back cover which should have been similar to the N5, with a soft but sufficient grip cover. I also found the plastic cover to be good for audio performance producing slightly better bass than those made of aluminum.
I really like the texture of the N5 as I have never dropped it once for almost one year already.
ketacdx - Tuesday, May 26, 2015 - link
I agree the Nexus 5 backing would have rocked on this. This phone is way too slippery vs. size for me to feel comfy not using a case and I hate using cases on phones this big, lol.coolied - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link
But you can't expect Asus (Zenfone 2) to use the same materials as LG (Nexus 5)zodiacfml - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link
I don't know if it is significantly more expensive and that material has been used several times already making it cheaper.zodiacfml - Wednesday, May 27, 2015 - link
True. It's not the reviewers fault as he dropped the device which produced the marks on the phone.