Asus Zenfone Zoom and Zenfone Selfie get Android 6.0 Marshmallow

With the budget Asus Zenfone Max getting a major update, it indeed makes sense that older and even some flagship smartphones get a face lift with Android 6.0 Marshmallow. Asus has begun to do just that by pushing out its Android 6.0 Marshmallow update (complete with its ZenUI underpinnings) to its flagship Zenfone Zoom and the Zenfone Selfie. And it arrives with some sweeter news. Both smartphones are treated a bit differently with the Android 6.0 update. The Zenfone Zoom gets bumped up to firmware version 4.21.40.74. While the camera smartphone sports a powerful processor with no shortage of RAM, Asus decided to be generous and remove some bloatware. The smartphone loses a couple of Asus apps like the Asus Backup, Play Books, Play Games, Play Newsstand, Google+ and the ZenFlash app. The new firmware gains some Google apps like Google Calendar, Messenger, Facebook, Facebook Messenger and even Instagram that will now come pre-installed. Asus Email, Asus Calendar, Asus Messaging, Asus Browser and Asus Music will be removed after performing a Factory Reset. Next up is the Zenfone Selfie, that gets a load of its shoulders by losing plenty of pointless Asus apps. Asus Backup, Mirror, Remote Link, Party Link, PC Link, Photo Frame, What’s Next, MyFrame, MyWater, Omlet chat, Data Transfer, Snap View and some apps for users in Taiwan like the EZ, Dr.Eye and Yahoo. The new apps added to the lighter ROM  include Google Calendar, Messenger, Motion Gesture and a Pano Sphere Mode in the camera app. For those of you who like some of the removed apps, you can still download them from the Google Play Store. And that’s a wrap for the spring cleaning for both smartphones. While many may assume that Asus is being generous, we think it more about space restrictions, on older and recently announced models. ROMs for both smartphone can be downloaded via an OTA package (you will have to wait a bit) or simply from the Asus ZenTalk forums for the Zenfone Zoom and the Zenfone Selfie. Meanwhile, the world still awaits the global availability of the Asus Zenfone 3 range that was launched at Computex 2016. The range includes the Asus Zenfone 3, Zenfone 3 Ultra and the Zenfone 3 Deluxe , that are now powered by Qualcomm chipsets.