Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL preview: First look

Introduction

Asus has been making phones for a few years now but the company hadn't quite managed to leave a mark on the market and the consumers' mind. That changed a bit with last year's ZenFone 2 series that offered unheard of specs at incredible prices, which made them quite popular among the budget conscious users.

This year the ZenFone 3 series is a bit different. Asus seems to have no interest to appeal to the budget market and is going straight for the flagship segment.

The first phone in the series to be launched is the simple-named ZenFone 3. Okay, calling it 'simple-named' downplays the fact that there are in fact two distinct model names - the ZE552KL and the ZE520KL - and that's without counting the extra Zenfone 3 phones in the family - Max, Deluxe, Laser, and Ultra. Confused enough? Well, don't be, these models will likely never be available on a single market simultaneously, so it's only websites that cater to several regions that need to make sense out of it.

Today we're previewing the Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL to be more precise. It's got a bigger screen, more memory and storage, and larger battery than its similarly named sibling and yet, with a price around $300-350, it costs less than the other Zenfone 3 phones.

Here's a brief version of the complete specs list before we continue.

Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL at a glance:

• 5.5-inch, 1920x1080 IPS LCD
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 625; 2.0GHz octa-core Cortex-A53 CPU, Adreno 506 GPU
• 4GB RAM, 64GB storage with microSD expansion
• Dual SIM support (hybrid slot)
• 4G LTE, VoLTE, Wi-Fi ac, Bluetooth 4.2, GPS/GLONASS/BeiDou , USB Type-C 2.0
• 16 megapixel rear camera, f/2.0, laser/PDAF, OIS+EIS, 4K video, dual LED flash
• 8 megapixel front camera, f/2.0
• Rear-mounted fingerprint reader
• 3000mAh battery
• Android 6.0.1 with Asus ZenUI 3.0

We spent a few days with the new ZenFone 3 to get a feel of how Asus's smartphone lineup is looking this year so join us on the next page for our impressions. Spoiler alert: It's looking pretty good.