Asus Zenfone 9 long-term review | iTechzilla

 

Updates | iTechzilla

The Zenfone 9 got two software updates while we were consuming it for this long-term review, and the first one transported Android 13, back in early December. That is a very good reversal time compared to most OEMs that are not Google or Samsung, so we mention Asus for working to quickly send out the newest version of the OS to the Zenfone 9, though it looks like older Asus smartphones drive a lot more waiting to do than this one.

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Then there was an extra update a few weeks later, which was much lesser so we assume it only packed bug fixes and numerous improvements. The point is that for large Android updates, as long as you have the newest high-end device it makes, Asus is quick enough in our book. Again, it may not be the fastest, but there are plenty of much slower rollouts out there.

   

We ca not speak a lot about how timely the security updates are, since the initial December rollout of Android 13 did also bring with it the December security patch level, and most companies that are not Google or Samsung have not showed out the January patch to their phones yet.

The situation looks to be similar, nevertheless, with updates going out slower than the fastest movers out there but still faster than a portion of the Chinese competition. In a casing, things are about average on the software update front - above normal if you have the latest and greatest, and maybe below average if you do not.

ZenUI | iTechzilla

Asus' skin on top of Android is named ZenUI, though you would not identify it from the About phone page in Settings, where there is no reference of it. All you get is the Android version and a complicated build number.

Anyhow, this is one of the brightest skins around, which takes Google's Android, retains the looks intact, and adds a bunch of extra choices here and there. "Stock Android" traditionalists may or may not like it - after all, it is not tock Android, but it is also not MIUI or One UI or ColorOS. It is far from those in its enterprise language, and in fact if you do not pay too much care you might think this is the same software Pixels run.

Whether that is a good thing or a bad entity is up to you. It could be argued that it is good meanwhile Asus has less things to adapt and thus perhaps mess up, or that it is good since it looks pretty much like Android does in Google's performances. On the other hand, skins are, for improved or worse, a point of differentiation between Android phones, and if your expedient's software looks just like a player's, it is losing at that precise game.

We do not lean in either track because there are sufficiently of other options out there if you do not hppen to enjoy Asus' income on the software. There is even a similarly sized device with a very not-stock-like skin, in Samsung's Galaxy S22, and as long as there are numerous choices out there, we are happy.

Perhaps unpredictably, the Settings menu on offer on the Zenfone 9 is one of the fullest we have encountered recently, so if you supposed there would not be so many things to select from because of its stock-like looks, you would be wrong. It is easier to cross than some heavier skins' Settings menus, though, and even if you struggle to locate somewhat the search function is always there for you.

    

Fascinatingly, you can choose between two kinds of Quick Settings designs, the more outdated one with circles for toggles, and the fresher one with ovals, which take up much more space for no good reason whatever. You probably predicted that we went with the previous, and you would be right.

Launcher, Recents | iTechzilla

The launcher is attractive standard, with an app drawer and all, but for such a stock-like skin we are perplexed by the omission of the Google Determine feed as a choice to show up to the left of the leftmost home screen. This is now a thing uniform on much heavier skins like MIUI, so the fact that ZenUI does not have it is strange. Clearly, though, it is not hard to live deprived of - unless you are a intransigent Google Discover feed addict. Do those smooth exist?

 

Anyhow, we digress. The Recent apps display is flat scrolling, as are most these days, and you get a couple of large options at the bottom, of which Screenshot is extremely redundant, as there are at smallest three other ways to achieve the same drive - you can tell Google Associate to take a screenshot for you, or press the power and volume down knobs at the same time, or dual tap the back of the phone - our preferred.

Talking of double beating the back, you can customary that to do other things, obviously, if you are not motivated to use it for screenshots. Just note that, as this feature usages the accelerometer, your taps need to be much more conclusive than a tap on the screen would be.

Back to the Recents menu - the Clear all button is simply useless in this day and age, when smartphones have ample quantities of RAM, and Android is really very good at handling memory. But there are still those people - you know who we nasty, the ones that keep their OCD at bay by patter pointless buttons. That is one of them.

Gesture navigation, Dark system shade scheme | iTechzilla

On the theme of pointless UI elements, the white (or black, dependent on background) pill-shaped bar thing that demonstrations up at the bottom of the screen when you have gesture navigation allowed probably takes the cake. All of the bars, in fact. And since this is a stock-like skin, you inappropriately ca not turn it off, like you can in some weightier ones. You are just stuck with it forever.

It is always there when you are by means of the phone, and it is never not unusable, as you could in fact swipe across the lowest even without this eyesore constantly 'indicating' to you that it is there – that is how they do it on other skins. Zero functionality taken away. But no. Google claims you look at the pill bar, and Asus does too. You will either have to deal with it or switch back to a steering bar with buttons, which takes up uniform more screen real estate, so the pill is the smaller of two evils for sure.

There are two compassion sliders for the Back gesture when you have gesture navigation bowed on, and you can play with these if you feel like that gesture is also too easy or too hard to trigger. We supposed the default settings were just fine.

  

Asus calls its dim theme "Dark system color scheme", which feels like someone was dreadfully trying not to use the same words as everybody else in order to feel different. Fair call it a dark theme, or dark mode. It is more efficient when two arguments can be used instead of four.

Anyhow, the dark theme (we are not playing Asus' game, apologetic) exists, and is schedulable to go on mechanically at sunset and off at sunrise. There are no custom agendas, though, which is a strange oversight. On the other hand, you can select whether to tint your wallpaper dark, and by how much, with an Denseness slider.

This mouth is "only obtainable for non-default wallpapers", for whatever reason, and while it is certainly welcome (and seen in many other skins), the slider is perhaps overkill for most people. We found its avoidance setting to be perfectly adequate.

     

Lastly, you can force the dark mode onto designated apps. You get a tilt of all your installed apps, which is organized alphabetically, and there are not any other sort
options. But there is a very comfortable search function that will rapidly get you to the app you are looking for for, in case it still does not have a dark theme of its own in this day and age.

Bugs, annoyances | iTechzilla

Although we have received a second minor update after the one that brought us Android 13, which we undertake was intended for bug-fixing purposes, there are still nearly bugs running around on the Zenfone 9 after installing that. We are hoping these get spoke as soon as possible, as they are irritating even if you might be able to live with them - or maybe not even get them at all. That is the nature of random bugs, they do not essentially show up on every device.

Anyhow, let’s start with the major one. When picking up a call we randomly ca not hear the person at the other end, but they can hear us flawlessly fine. This has occurred only a few times, and before you say perhaps it was network-related, it is never occurred to us on any other phone, ever, and every single time it was always us who could not hear them, and not the additional way round.

This same thing occurs much more often when you switch between earphone, speaker, and Bluetooth earbuds while previously in a call. About 80-90% of times after switching, we could not hear our discusser anymore. The only fix that everything every time is to hang up and call back, which absolutely is anything but ideal. Switching again to the earphone, speaker, or Bluetooth accessory occasionally works too, but oftentimes it does not.

Oh, and talking of the speakerphone, it is bad - to the point where most people we were speaking to while on speakerphone constantly asked us to reappearance what we just said, even when we were in a silent room. This is another one of those small minutiae that generally distinguishes factual flagship smartphones from the mid-rangers (and sometimes 'flagship killers'), which is not obvious from looking only at a spec sheet, and inappropriately, the Zenfone 9 does not pass the prize test in this regard.

Next up, some slighter annoyances. Wi-Fi randomly turns back on over after you have turned it off, and firstly we thought this was just a bug within the purpose that is supposed to mechanically turn Wi-Fi back on when you are in an area where you have used Wi-Fi before. And then we twisted that off, and it remained still happening. Within a few minutes after whirling Wi-Fi off, it is back on again - even if you are in a part of town where you have never used Wi-Fi. This is much less of a battery gutter problem nowadays than it used to be, and so you can securely just ignore it, but it is still a mysterious bug to experience.

The physical adjustment slider for brightness, which is situated at the bottom of the expanded Quick Settings view, continually gets stuck in one specific scenario. When you enter a pitch-black environment, the brightness suitably goes down to its minimum. But the slider is stuck on the preceding position, never actually receiving to the leftmost point. This is clearly even more easily ignored than the Wi-Fi problem described above, since it is just an ornamental issue, but it is a bug we have noticed a lot so we thought we would mention it nonetheless.

The status bar can only demonstration you a grand total of three notification icons at one time, even if there's clearly ample room for more. It feels like this feature was applied back when notches were a thing, and a wide thing at that, and then Asus' software technologists just forgot about it and never altered it once hole-punches took over.

And here and now a(nother) small complain to end with. The standard Phone app's call log does not contain a full calling history with a definite contact. If you tap the contact, it instantly calls, and pitter-patter "i" just gets you to the contact page. On many other skins, there is a way to understand your full call history with said contact, but not here.

Camera setup, image quality | iTechzilla

The Zenfone 9 emanates with an honest rear camera setup, which we highly escalate. There are two camera rings on the back, because there are two actual, useful cameras in the phone. There is no third or fourth macro or depth sensors put on the back for beautification purposes, in order to give the imprint that there are more focal lengths on offer than there really are. Alike we said – it is an honest setup, and we dig it.

And if you were criticizing the lack of a macro shooter, fret not since the ultrawide camera has autofocus, and as such, can dual as a macro cam. That supposed, we did not test that for this review as macro photography is still a niche thing, but if you are concerned in some samples, make sure to check out our usual review of the Zenfone 9.

The main camera has an exciting, and still fairly rare, trick up its sleeve - gimbal-like ocular image stabilization (OIS), a 6-axis system capable of recompensing up to 3 degrees of wobble (up from 1 degree on conventional OIS systems). So, let’s see what these incomes for picture quality.

Throughout daytime, the main cracker's shots come out with good dynamic range, high contrast, good white steadiness and colors that pop without going overboard. Aspect levels are good, but if you look closely, there is a processed look all over, which may put some people off and may be respected by others.

The ultrawide is good in daytime, with decent energetic range and pleasant colors, but a little bit of noise in the shades. Else, detail levels are good too, and the photos look ever so slightly less managed than the main cameras.

There's a 2x zoom choice in the viewfinder even if the Zenfone 9 doesn't have a telephoto camera. The zooming is done digitally on the main sensor, and the results aren't bad, while not standing out either. Intricate textures can get mangled, and that is where a standalone 2x zoom instrument would do better. Inclusive, for a quick social media share, and with no pixel peeking, these are plenty usable.

For darkness shots, there is a setting that involves Night Mode mechanically when the phone sees fit. If you go this on, you can also engage Night Mode physically, but the results are precisely the same - this is not like Auto Night Mode on some other phones, anywhere it goes for an ever so slightly shorter exposure associated to manually engaged Night Mode. It is literally the same thing.

So, in order to give you a precise idea of what the main camera can produce at night deprived of Night Mode, we crooked that chin off. You can perceive for yourself that there is certainly a reason why Auto Night Style is on by default. A portion of these shots come out underexposed and missing in dynamic range, so we mention leaving the Auto Night Mode purpose turned on. That is, if you do not mind that it takes extra time to shoot images in this way than you might be used to from extra phone - the capture the situation is usually between 2 to 4 seconds, but then there is some extra to come for dispensation on top of that.

If you do permission Auto Night Mode on, or if you do not and physically engage Night Mode, you will get images that are far better, with brighter darks, reinstated highlights, and extra minutiae, at the expense of more improving, which is never not noticeable, but is perhaps worth the cost in most scenarios.

At darkness, the ultrawide (with Auto Night Mode off) does like to underexpose shots much extra than the main camera, which was already attractive bad. The results are thus always neighboring on unusable.

Therefore, again, we commend either exit Auto Night Mode on or profitable for manual Night Mode whensoever possible. You will get images with fewer noise, more facts, and nicer colors, at the expenditure of an oversharpened look. Note that Night Mode potshots on the ultrawide take even more to custody than on the main sensor, and they are never as good.

The zoom potshots at night are soft and noisy, and get gradually softer and noisier the less ambient light you have around. There is a point of overall illumination up to which one could argue that these were scarcely usable in a pinch, but once that point is touched, they are best trashed. There is no devoted 2x option in Night Mode, so we did not test that, though you can 'hack' your way everywhere it by using pinch to zoom. We're pretty sure most people will not ever go that route, henceforth why we did not either.

Selfies come out excessive during daytime, with a wide dynamic range and pleasingly saturated colors - a look most people seem to love a lot. Aspect levels are good too, while the autofocus helps keep your face in emphasis no matter what your arm's length may be.

Portrait Mode looks okay as well, though the blur is very, very subtle likened to what the competition offers. At night this delicacy makes it pretty hard to classify which selfies were shot in Portrait Mode and which were not, particularly in low ambient lighting, since then all of them look very fuzzy anyway. We would avoid Portrait Mode selfies at night, and for usual shots we would go for backlit environments. If you can still discovery some light around you, the results are not half bad, but they are very far from what the main hindmost camera can deliver.

Overall, then, the Zenfone 9's cameras are flawlessly adequate, but they do not make us scream with joy. They are definitely not unsatisfactory in any way, but they also seem like they are not really trying very hard to beat the handset's contestants in any way. That may be Asus simply hoping the scope would sell this device regardless, or it may be a lack of resources piercing in the camera direction. While we ca not say you'd always feel let down by these shooters, you are also probably never going to be truly wowed by them either.

Conclusion | iTechzilla

If you like big phones or flat the normal sized ones of today, the Asus Zenfone 9 is certainly not for you. Yes, it is more pocketable, and yes, it's much easier to grip, but the screen is meaningfully smaller. You may get castoff to that in time (it took this reviewer almost a week), but here's the thing - the second you interrelate with a bigger phone again, you will not ever want to go back to the Zenfone.

On the other hand, if you are one of those extremely active people in comment sections across the internet somewhere you keep saying how all you want is a good high-end flagship in a small size, then you should certainly be looking at the Zenfone 9. And lease's face it, you probably have already – it is not like you are spoilt for special when it comes to these specific necessities. Expectantly, you even bought one (or a Galaxy S22), to prove to phone creators and reviewers alike that there is still a market for smaller devices and they should have made them and revising them, respectively.

For a though, they probably will. Asus is using size as a core differentiating factor for the Zenfone 9, as it is essentially given up on competing head-to-head with Samsung and the Chinese businesses in the realm of normally sized normal flagships. They are niche hunting, with ROG gaming phones on one hand, and the little Zenfone on the other. Is this policy successful? That rest on on your definition of the word. Sales-wise, clearly not.

But sales facts are not always everything - Apple identifies this well. There is too 'mindshare' not just 'market share', and Asus is obviously one of the general brands with our readers. We cannot sufficiently assess how well the Zenfone 9 is execution in the market, but a neat stand-in for an answer resolve be whether the Zenfone 10 keeps the 9's sizing. If so, then it means it is working. If not, then it was not.

Size aside, the Zenfone 9 has a lot of belongings going for it. The reason we keep accentuation its stature is that it is really really important. So from this point of view, Asus' strategy of creation it a differentiating factor has clearly worked. If you are a small phone lover, the Zenfone 9 feels very good to handle and brings an almost flagship package for a less-than-flagship price. Its performance is outstanding, and its battery life is as well. Flatness, while not chart-topping, is great.

The speakers are unsettled, and among the best on the market for anything that is not a gaming phone, the shaking motor is very good too, as are the display and the fingerprint sensor. The cameras, while nonentity to get extremely excited about, deliver very decent results during the day, and good shots at night, too, if you can replacement the time to use Night Mode.

The software appearances like 'stock Android' even though it has quite a few accompaniments on top of that, and this could be an advantage or a disadvantage liable on your feelings about stock vs. very heavy skins. Update cadence seems around average, better so far since it was Asus' latest and greatest, but perhaps getting worse by the time Android 14 comes along.

The chief problem here is that while the Zenfone 9 is close to giving you everything a flagship fixes, it stops ever so somewhat short of that. There is no telephoto camera, for sample, and the two snappers that are on the rear do not really deliver any outstanding shots. The back, while it touches amazing, is plastic, yet there is no wireless charging.

These are all topics that the similarly sized Samsung Galaxy S22 does not have, and it is even presently cheaper than the Zenfone in most markets. So, if you like the rather exclusive design, the stock-like skin, and/or the idea of a hustled charging brick so much that you are willing to forego these other downsides, then the Zenfone 9 is the effective choice for you. It also has a Qualcomm chip and a battery life that is not laughably short - both things that evade the S22, and neither of persons are small things.

But inclusive, as a full package, it does not truly, fully bring on the dream of having all of the structures every top-of-the-line device out there has, fair in a small package. There are still negotiations. And that is why we can only carefully recommend the Zenfone 9. We think you should look at its side-by-side with the Galaxy S22, and pick the one that has the greatest upsides and least downsides for your personal use case.

That is not to say that the Zenfone 9 is not a great phone. It is. It could have been improved had Asus really absent all-in with the 'flagship specs and structures in a small phone' mantra. Perhaps the Zenfone 10 will medication that in the coming months.