Asus yesterday launched the Zenfone Zoom in India. As is quite apparent from its name and design, the Zenfone Zoom is a camera centric smartphone.
But at this price it isn’t the only phone with good camera capability. LG G3, which used to be the flagship smartphone of LG in 2014, is now available for as low as Rs 28,998, giving tough competition to the mid-range devices including the new Asus smartphone.
Design
The Asus Zenfone Zoom has few design elements that makes it stand out in the crowd. The phone has a huge circular shaped camera in its back like the one in Lumia 1020. It has a leather finish plastic back panel which is removable. Both the phones have broad side panels but the Zenfone Zoom has curved side panels and hence would offer better grip. Apart from regular power, volume rocker, Micro USB port and 3.5 mm jack, it has a dedicated camera key. The Zenfone Zoom measures 158.9 x 78.8 x 5 ~ 11.95 mm, and weighs 185 grams.
The LG G3 has a polycarbonate back panel which is quite tough. The phone has a mettalic frame. Its back panel has glossy finish but it isn’t slippery. Like all recent LG phones, it too has its power and volume keys on its back panel. The LG G3 comes with a removable back panel below which lies the micro SD and SIM slots. The battery too is removable. The rear panel has the camera unit, flanked by an Infrared LED and flash lights on left and right hand side respectively. Towards the bottom of the back panel, there is a speaker grill as well. The micro USB port and the 3.5 mm jack are located at the bottom of the display along with a microphone. An Infrared port (for the remote control function) and a mic for noise suppression is at the top of the phone.
Comparatively, the Zenfone Zoom might attract eyeballs with its unique look but the LG G3 looks quite good as well.
Display
The LG G3 is armed with a 5.5 inch IPS display with impressive Quad HD (1440 x 2560 pixels) resolution, thereby offering 538 ppi pixel density. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. It impressed us a lot in our review which you can read here (https://www.themobileindian.com/reviews/1113_LG-G3-(32-GB)-Review-The-best-minus-the-beauty).
The Asus Zenfone Zoom also has a 5.5 inch IPS display but with full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution. Ofcourse its pixel density of 403 ppi is impressive but not as high as that of G3. This too is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 4.
Ofcourse, LG G3 is the winner of this round, thanks to its quad-HD resolution.
Processor & Memory
The Asus Zenfone Zoom has an Intel Atom Z3580 quad-core Processor clocked at 2.3 GHz, which runs the phone with 4 GB of RAM. It has 64 GB of internal storage and a 128 GB microSD card slot.
The LG G3 has the 2.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor as well as 3 GB of RAM. The internal storage of this model of LG G3 (which is available for Rs 28,998) has 32 GB of internal storage and it also has an expandable storage slot that can accomodate a micro SD card of 128 GB capacity.
Software
The LG G3 runs on Android Lollipop but it is set to get the latest Android Marshmallow as well. The G3 has a simpler user interface made by LG.
The Asus Zenfone Zoom also runs on Android Lollipop, with Asus’ Zen UI on top of it. There is no word yet about it getting the Android Marshmallow.
Battery
Both these phones have a 3000 mAh battery, but Asus hasn’t revealed how long the Zenfone Zoom’s battery lasts. The LG G3, on the other hand, gave us more than a day’s back up during ourreview.
Camera
The LG G3 has a 13 Megapixel rear camera with optical image stabilisation feature that reduces blur caused due to shaking. Besides, it has something called laser auto focus feature that measures the distance to the object instantly. There are two LED flash lights in the rear panel as well to assist for low light imaging. This camera can record 4K videos.
During our review, LG G3 did not failed to impress us with its camera output even once. The G3 managed to capture pictures as they are without fail even on a single occassion. Even on full zoom, there was little noise in the pictures which is exceptional.
The Asus Zenfone Zoom has gained a lot of buzz. It is one of the few smartphones to offer 3X optical zoom. Besides, its 13 megapixel primary shooter has high end features like laser autofocus, optical image stabilisation, dual-tone LED flash, geo-tagging, touch focus, face detection, panorama, HDR etc. The Asus Zenfone Zoom also offers a 5 megapixel selfie taker.
However, it is remain to be seen if the Zenfone Zoom delivers what it promises on paper or just a paper tiger.
Connectivity
The Asus Zenfone Zoom has two SIM card slots and it offers 4G connectivity. Besides, it has WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and GPS with A-GPS and GLONASS.
The LG G3 has only one SIM slot but it has all the connectivity features that you can wish from a mid-range smartphone such as NFC, Bluetooth 4.0 LE with A2DP, Infrared Port, WiFi (a/b/g/n/ac), WiFi Direct, WiFi hotspot, and DLNA.
Wrapping Up
The LG G3 is almost a two years old smartphone but it has superb features make it no less than any new age mid-range smartphone. After the Android Marshmallow, it may even look better than its peers. The Asus Zenfone Zoom looks quite promising as well but a real world test of its performance is needed to ascertain its worth for the price tag it is being offered. If you need a smartphone as soon as possible and is confused between these two, then we will suggest you to go for the LG G3, else wait for sometime till we do a thorough test on the Asus Zenfone Zoom.