[ZenFone 2 General] rlaw:
[MENTION=438582]Tuanies[/MENTION]

I was also at the event. Here's my feedback:

1. The capacitive buttons don't light up, which is a bummer. A minor annoyance overall but still.

2. The sound and camera quality is generally pretty good. The camera seems to be a little sensitive and finicky at times but overall it's on par with my OPO, IMO.

3. I'm not a fan of ZenUI. It doesn't seem all that well thought out and it's very busy, a lot going on. I've been mucking about with my phones since the original RAZR days so I know my way around but upon first boot and opening the launcher and whatnot, all the tutorials and everything hitting you right in the face do have a cost in cognitive overload (the keyboard is another offender here).

4. The ASUS apps are littered with grammatical errors sprinkled about here and there, including some in the settings. They don't significantly impede understanding but they do lend to a feeling of a less than top notch professional job with the software.

5. This phone is blooooooaaaaattted and most of the ASUS apps can't be disabled. Boo.

6. Some of the features need better explanations in settings of what it is they do.

7. The CABC feature of the display seems a bit too aggressive, IMO. Very dramatic changes in little time. Also the minimum brightness needs to be turned down. By a lot. The screen is a laser at night!

8. Battery life and performance are very good, both comparable to my OPO.

9. The power switch location is completely silly but thankfully I don't have to use it unless I'm accessing power menu.

10. Again, hardware wise this phone is pretty pretty ****ing good. Cannot be stressed enough.

11. The circle view case is a smart addition and the phone works very well with it. No complaints there, love that you can take photos with it folded back thanks to the clear window!

12. I did encounter one fairly significant bug - there's a feature that allows you to screenshot but holding the recents key. This feature interferes with screen pinning as exiting that mode requires you to hold the recents key... Which takes a screenshot instead!

13. Accessing Google app via Swipe up gesture is a bit different. Need to hold home. button then slide up to the Google circle and release at that point.

14. BoostMaster ****ing rocks!

15. The camera app isn't intuitive.

Overall, I'm very happy with the phone and case and will probably make it a permanent replacement for my OPO. I've been using it since I received it yesterday and have 2 SIMs in it. Everything works very well.

Hardware wise, there's very little to complain about. Pretty much just the capacitive buttons and the power button placement. Everything else is fantastic. Performance and battery are extremely comparable to OnePlus One, which is a good thing, while the specs themselves are much better - reflected in benchmark results!

Software wise, the Zenfone 2 isn't nearly as impressive. The camera app isn't intuitive and has many settings to configure. The ASUS apps aren't perfectly translated. The ZenUI aesthetic lacks polished execution.

I haven't gotten any random reboots or force closes so that's a good thing. It's unfortunate that x86 Android is limited to 32bit even though the SoC is 64bit. The lack of bootloader unlock is disappointing.