General [Info] ASUS ZenFone 8

[jaseman]

So, got the phone yesterday and I'm going to send it back today

Two main things that put me off: dimensions, mainly weight and missing notifications. The first one is purely personal since I've small hands but the second grippe is something I don't understand how can Asus ship a phone in this state. No Gmail notifications even after tinkering around the settings to exclude the app from the "optimization" engine. I read in some review that this behaviour extends also to the alarm clock so imagine the consequences in the morning...Simply don't have the time to wait for this to be solved via an update since it would be my main phone.

Extremely smooth scrolling due to the 120hz but you need to lock it permanently since the auto setting introduces lag in multiple occasions. Battery life seems ok but had it only for a short while with no SIMs inside.

Since the transfer from my Iphone to this would involve a lot of effort (have an E-SIM on the Iphone that would need to be "reborned" as a physical one) plus the usual Whatsapp transfer mess, and I'm not particular unhappy with IOS (I still have a preference for Android for the notifications and the sharing functions), I decided to send it back.

The quest for an Android compact phone continues but dare I say that the Iphone 12 mini is probably the best phone for me? Enough battery life to last me a day, smooth as butter despite 60Hz refresh rate and no bugs. Now, if the IOS 14.4.1 jailbreak could be announced, I would be in heaven.

If you had NO SIM installed in the phone how are you expecting to get Gmail notifications? Sounds fishy to me.

 

[Puksom]

Really hope this phone will get an awesome Custom rom community. It ticks alot of boxes for me. Hopefully LineageOS or something will come in the near future

 

[LeDiable]

I will be returning this phone as well, there are more issues with it than I anticipated (did factory reset to be sure):

- For 4000 mAh battery life is not great.
- Phone is quite heavy for its size.
- The fingerprint reader is not working reliably even after repeated finger registering.
- Sometimes the phone body gets hot even when nothing demanding is running.
- I was unable to add my Debit Card to Google Pay due to security risks saying my phone is modified or rooted (working flawlessly on my other phones).
- Was expecting better Camera photos after positive reviews.

Guess I will wait for Pixel 6 hoping it will be compact as its predecesor.

Thanks for the honest opinion mate.

I've started to ensure making it a point to not purchase ANY phone that all these youtubers rave about, they are ALL either paid off for a positive review or just want to be on the good side of the brand for freebies, invites, other perks and sh*t.

Have had a bad taste with the *ultra-expensive* Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra (Zuck-all battery life, HOT Grill of a phone (sh*t exynos), lackluster zoom camera).

Sold it off within a month [for a MASSIVE loss] and bought the Redmi Note 10 Pro (for less than 1/4th the price) instead. Running it with ArrowOS by @daniml3, I couldn't have been happier.

My personal main criteria henceforth:
1) Battery life (SUPREME).
2) Phone petite-ness/dimensions shouldn't be sacrificed by the excuse of putting in a big battery. That's the saddest excuse these brands make to give pithy batteries inside phones. "Oh! any bigger and the phone would've been bulky" I call BS.
3) AMOLED 120Hz.
4) Processor speed etc. doesn't really matter these days; in fact Qualcomm seem to have lost their marbles with the 888 by making a deal with the devil (viz. Samsung) for cheap 5nm fabrication which should on the contrary suck much less power and run cooler and does both the other way round i.e. Hottest running chip ever and sips power like an Irishman goes through whiskey.
Hope Google does something new with the "white-chapel" chip being made along with "again!!!" rolls eyes, Samsung. /facepalm

Mid-range (upper/mid) is where the game's at these days.

/Sorry for the rant.

 

[Kemez]

Got this phone 2 days ago for 594 EUR / 724 USD. This is 80 EUR below MSRP in Poland. This offer was valid only for the 8GB/128GB model.
I have waited for a compact fully featured phone with my LG V30 which is still running well.

I wanted:
- visibly superior camera change
- better screen (brighter in sunlight, dimmer at night and with better color reproduction)
- BT 5.2
- light - below 190g - mostly for use with gimbals
- with focus on audio - HD audio, preferable headphone jack
- not worse in any aspect than LG V30 (IPXX, quality, durability, memory and storage speeds etc)

The only phones that have this are Zenfone 8 and Xperia 5 III.
Xperia will be much more expensive (50% more!), has even slimmer screen which isn't ideal for anything else than movies, is visibly taller, may have better camera quality and more lenses isn't available. The only point that is an considerable plus may be the cameras. For me Asus is good enough so I can't see myself pouring that much cash for a slight improvement. Everything else is superb on Asus.

If the camera will be much better on Xperia than I'll change the Zenfone for Xperia 5 IV.

Testing the battery now. If this will be ok the Zenfone stays. For now it's ongoing app installs, updates, synchronizations all the time so I can't say anything yet.

 

[moist_line]

Got this phone 2 days ago for 594 EUR / 724 USD. This is 80 EUR below MSRP in Poland. This offer was valid only for the 8GB/128GB model.
I have waited for a compact fully featured phone with my LG V30 which is still running well.

I wanted:
- visibly superior camera change
- better screen (brighter in sunlight, dimmer at night and with better color reproduction)
- BT 5.2
- light - below 190g - mostly for use with gimbals
- with focus on audio - HD audio, preferable headphone jack
- not worse in any aspect than LG V30 (IPXX, quality, durability, memory and storage speeds etc)

The only phones that have this are Zenfone 8 and Xperia 5 III.
Xperia will be much more expensive (50% more!), has even slimmer screen which isn't ideal for anything else than movies, is visibly taller, may have better camera quality and more lenses isn't available. The only point that is an considerable plus may be the cameras. For me Asus is good enough so I can't see myself pouring that much cash for a slight improvement. Everything else is superb on Asus.

If the camera will be much better on Xperia than I'll change the Zenfone for Xperia 5 IV.

Testing the battery now. If this will be ok the Zenfone stays. For now it's ongoing app installs, updates, synchronizations all the time so I can't say anything yet.

Could you post a follow-up on this? I'm on the fence about this phone but it seems that SD888 processor is very power hungry. I'm also concerned about VOLTE for T-mobile.

 

[Kemez]

Could you post a follow-up on this? I'm on the fence about this phone but it seems that SD888 processor is very power hungry. I'm also concerned about VOLTE for T-mobile.

Yes, I will update this. Today I had reached 5 SOT with intensive updates, smartwatch setups, video calls for work etc. I did recharge 25min before another shootout and it went 50% up so definitely charging speed is quite good.
Also after disabling 5G as I don't need it now, seting up AOD the standby seems very very good. I can't see the battery going down with screen of even when streaming audio over bt with smartwatch connected.
I hope to finish setting it up by tomorrow and than use it just normally. I am optimistic that it can manage my day, but just shy of getting empty.

The battery is actually big so I hope further updates will improve that area.

I have checked with my criteria all phones on GSMarena and only 9 show up from which only 4 are/will be avaialble in my country. From those only Zenfone and Xperias III have 3,5mm audio connector.

What I mean is - there are no other options really so I will try to live with the battery and learn how to opitmize it

 

[moist_line]

Yes, I will update this. Today I had reached 5 SOT with intensive updates, smartwatch setups, video calls for work etc. I did recharge 25min before another shootout and it went 50% up so definitely charging speed is quite good.
Also after disabling 5G as I don't need it now, seting up AOD the standby seems very very good. I can't see the battery going down with screen of even when streaming audio over bt with smartwatch connected.
I hope to finish setting it up by tomorrow and than use it just normally. I am optimistic that it can manage my day, but just shy of getting empty.

The battery is actually big so I hope further updates will improve that area.

I have checked with my criteria all phones on GSMarena and only 9 show up from which only 4 are/will be avaialble in my country. From those only Zenfone and Xperias III have 3,5mm audio connector.

What I mean is - there are no other options really so I will try to live with the battery and learn how to opitmize it

Thank you for the response. My pixel 4a usually gets 4-5 hrs sot without gaming. I mainly use it for streaming youtube, google maps, music, and occasional drone flying over the weekend. I just don't want to spend that much on a phone that will give me about the same battery life.

 

[gmariust]

Too bad the EU model has no FM Radio module. Not sure why not, Asus just lost my 600 Euro as I really liked it otherwise.

 

[michelinoO]

Too bad the EU model has no FM Radio module. Not sure why not, Asus just lost my 600 Euro as I really liked it otherwise.

It's present in system/app, but maybe there is a init lock by some settings

 

[NisseGurra]

GitHub - omnirom/android_device_asus_zenfone8

Contribute to omnirom/android_device_asus_zenfone8 development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

Some omirom love for ZF8

 

[alboz83]

Hi, i hate notch or hole on display, but this smartphone is finally compact. I asked in other forum if there is a option to hide punch hole, but seems there isn't in the settings. Is there any way to hide it via modding as well?

 

[Kemez]

Yes! Just use the cameleon tape and glue it onto the punch hole. It will adapt to the underlying color and make it disappear.

 

[alboz83]

Yes! Just use the cameleon tape and glue it onto the punch hole. It will adapt to the underlying color and make it disappear.

What? Are you joking me? Wow many time ago xda was a incredible modders community, now it's useless!!!

 

[raimis78]

Hi guys, just got the phone today, so can't comment much, but the thing that's bothering me is that the call quality is absolutely terrible. And I mean terrible not just bad. I tried calling several people and it's the same with all, however they can hear me well. I also tried calling on Whatsapp and it's okay, not great, not terrible. Any idea if this can be fixed somehow with settings or should I perhaps try getting new SIM card. If it's not fixable I will need to return it since it's absolutely atrocious.

 

[Undead_Son]

Hi guys, just got the phone today, so can't comment much, but the thing that's bothering me is that the call quality is absolutely terrible. And I mean terrible not just bad. I tried calling several people and it's the same with all, however they can hear me well. I also tried calling on Whatsapp and it's okay, not great, not terrible. Any idea if this can be fixed somehow with settings or should I perhaps try getting new SIM card. If it's not fixable I will need to return it since it's absolutely atrocious.

Hi, what's your carrier?

 

[raimis78]

Hi, what's your carrier?

It's TELE2 Lithuania. Weird thing, I am reading Asus forums now and see a lot other people facing the issue, but for them call quality is bad on both sides. In my case, it's only on my side, people I called said I even sound better than previous phone.

 

[Undead_Son]

It's TELE2 Lithuania. Weird thing, I am reading Asus forums now and see a lot other people facing the issue, but for them call quality is bad on both sides. In my case, it's only on my side, people I called said I even sound better than previous phone.

Yeah, seems like many people have this problem.

 

[dankcuddlybear]

I was thinking about buying this
phone as soon as it gets a UK release. How legible is the screen in direct sunlight? Also, has anyone tried booting a treble GSI and if so any hardware issues (eg camera, fingerprint, volte etc)

 

[chrisrevoltes]

Also, has anyone tried booting a treble GSI and if so any hardware issues (eg camera, fingerprint, volte etc)

Good question. Anyone?

 

[bo6o]

Hi, can an owner give me some info on the cameras - I need to know if both cameras can shoot raw/dng and the max exposure times and max iso for both?
Consider buying it, after my mistake buying xperia 5 ii, which has focus issues and really bad camera sensors...