Asus Zenfone 3S Max First Impressions: Could be a worthy competitor to the Redmi Note 4

Asus has been pushing more smartphones out these days, than we can count on our fingers or even keep track of. In fact, over the past year, Asus has gotten into the upgrade zone (read correction mode) where it launches a smartphone, and then a few months later, will launch an upgraded version of the same to keep up with the competition. While customers may not exactly like this behaviour (because their smartphone gets outdated in a matter of months or days) it surely helps Asus keep up with the competition and when it comes to the budget segment, the competition is pretty tough.

With that said, Asus sent us its Zenfone 3S Max that we thought would simply be a hardware upgrade to the currently available Zenfone 3 Max, which we reviewed back in November last year.

Unlike the past upgrades that were simply a bump up in hardware, the Asus Zenfone 3S Max does offer something better. It’s a complete revamp with new hardware, a bigger battery and a brand new design, that comes with plenty of plus points.

Build and Design

The Asus Zenfone 3S Max features an all metal body. That’s all minus the plastic cap at the bottom and thin strip that runs at the very top. The design reminds me of the Zenfone 3 and it sure looks premium. You get a contoured 2.5D arc glass on the front which is most fingerprint resistant.

When you compare it with the Zenfone 3 Max, plenty has changed. There speaker has been moved from the back of the device to the bottom end. The fingerprint reader also has moved to the front, making it convenient to unlock the device.

Overall, I was impressed at the construction quality especially when you consider that this smartphone is expected to be priced in the budget segment. The handset we received is the gold variant and the sand-blasted finish indeed looks and feels premium.

Display

The Asus Zenfone 3S Max features a 5.2-inch HD (1280x720 pixels) resolution LCD display. At first glance it did not seem bright enough. In fact, I noticed that there is a strange yellow tinge when you look at it from an angle. The 2.5D contoured arc glass even with its droplet like rounded appearance, does not take the sheen away from this display. Although at 720p text did look at bit pixelated.

Hardware

The older Zenfone 3 Max used a MediaTek chipset in the 5.2-inch form factor and with the 3S Max, the tradition continues. This time however we have a MediaTek 6750 chipset with 3GB RAM and 32GB internal storage that can be expanded to 2TB which is a lot for a smartphone in this range. The smartphone stick to the hybrid SIM tray which also accommodates the memory card so it is not exactly a dual SIM device, because 32GB of internal storage will not be enough for most users.

Coming to connectivity, we get a dual SIM set up (micro SIM 4G+Nano SIM 4G), Wi-Fi 802.11ac, CAT4 support, GPS, AGPS and Bluetooth v4.0. Like with every other smartphone in this range, we get a microUSB 2.0 port for charging and data transfers. Powering it all is a massive 5,000mAh battery which seems to be hidden pretty well in the slim-looking body. Asus claims that it delivers up to 34 days of standby time. Check out our full review to see it lives up to that claim.

OS

The Asus Zenfone 3S Max runs Android 7.0 Nougat. While it sounds like good news, there’s also a fresh new version of Asus’ Zen UI 3.0 with some customisations to accommodate the new Nougat features.

As always, there’s plenty of bloat as well. From Instagram to Asus’ own apps, (that I rarely use) they all cannot be uninstalled. With Android Nougat on board I expected a revamp but sadly this is not the case. One thing I did appreciate was the ability to change the display size (scaling) which brought about some level of consistency while using the device.

Camera

On paper, the Asus Zenfone 3S Max seems to have it all. In fact, even the camera department appears to be covered with a 13MP, f/2.0 aperture PixelMaster camera on the back and an 8MP unit on the front.

From the shots that I have clicked so far, they do not look that impressive. The camera is fast to lock focus, but somehow clicks blurry pictures which is a problem, since Xiaomi has worked on its camera on the Redmi Note 4 . We will still need to test it thoroughly to give a proper verdict.

Conclusion

The Asus Zenfone 3S Max indeed looks like the ultimate budget smartphone package on paper. An HD display combined with a low-powered MediaTek chipset and massive battery should impress us when it comes to battery times as well.

Considering that the Zenfone 3 Max was priced around the Rs 13,000 mark, we should expect its successor to be priced around the same. But keeping in mind the new design, with uprated internals Asus could price this smartphone a bit higher.

With Xiaomi selling the Redmi Note 4 like hotcakes , it indeed made plenty of sense for Asus to come up with an upgrade.

For now, it seems like a worthy one on paper and definitely a better smartphone than the currently available 3 Max. Asus has started to send out invites to the media hinting that device will be launched on 7 February. So watch out for our full review before you take the leap.