KOMPAS.com - Smartphone flagship Asus , Zenfone 5 dan Zenfone 5Z resmi meluncur di pameran gadget terbesar dunia, Mobile World Congress ( MWC 2018 ) di Barcelona, Spanyol. Kedua ponsel baru ini tampaknya tidak malu-malu mencontek habis-habisan iPhone X .
Dilihat dari tampilan depan, Zenfone 5 dan Zenfone 5Z sangat mirip dengan tampilan iPhone X, lengkap dengan takik atau "poni layar" (notch) di atas display.
Di bagian belakang juga nampak mirip dengan punggung iPhone X, dengan dual-camera yang tersusun vertikal di pojok kiri. Namun tidak dengan fingerprint yang terlihat mencolok tepat di atas logo Asus.
Adanya fingerprint bukan berarti Asus tidak mengekor iPhone X untuk sistem Face ID. Zenfone 5 juga menyertakan teknologi serupa. Namun, sistem Face Unlock di Zenfone 5 dan 5Z ini disebut sekadar memuaskan keinginan pasar, alih-alih membuatnya secanggih Face ID.
Duo smartphone ini memiliki kamera ganda di belakang dengan resolusi 12 megapiksel dengan bukaan lensa f/1.8 untuk kamera utama. Sementara kamera sekunder memiliki sudut pandang wide-angle.
Baik Zenfone 5 dan Zenfone 5Z sama-sama memiliki bentang layar LCD 6,2 inci, dimana lebih besar dibanding iPhone X yang hanya berbentang 5,8 inci.
Andrew Hoyle/CNET Asus Zenfone 5 (kiri) dan iPhone X (kanan) yang tampak mirip. Asus Zenfone 5 memiliki layar LCD lebih besar dibanding layar OLED iPhone X. Serupa dengan iPhone X, Asus mengikis habis bingkai (bezel) dengan rasio screen-to-body sebesar 90 persen. Hanya tersisa takik di bagian atas sebagai tempat kemera depan beresolusi 8 megapiksel dan speaker.
Asus juga mengklaim menyisipkan teknologi yang disebutnya sebagai "AI display" untuk mengatur warna display secara otomatis dengan menyesuaikan temperatur. Teknologi ini mirip dengan teknologi True Tone milik Apple .
"Beberapa orang akan menyebut ini (Zenfone 5 dan Zenfone 5Z) meniru Apple. Namun kita tidak bisa mengabaikan keinginan konsumen. Anda harus mengikuti tren", jelas kepala marketng global Asus, Marcel Campos saat memperkenalkan produk anyarnya, seperti dikutip KompasTekno dari The Verge , Rabu (28/2/2018).
Bedanya dengan Apple yang mendukung pengisian daya nirkabel, Zenfone 5 dan Zenfone 5Z baru mendukung fitur quick charging dan masih menyematkan colokan headphone jack. Itu sebabnya, Zenfone 5 dan Zenfone 5Z masih memiliki badan ponsel yang cukup tebal.
Keduanya juga akan dijalankan dengan OS Android 8.0 Oreo dengan baterai berkapasitas 3.300 mAh.
Untuk Zenfone 5 akan diperkuat dengan chipset termutakhir Qualcomm, Snapdragon 845 yang dipadankan dengan RAM 8 GB dan storage 128 atau 256 GB, tergantung wilayah pemasaran.
Sementara Zenfone 5 standar akan didukung chipset lebih rendah, Snapdragon 636 dengan RAM 4 GB dan internal 64 GB.
Zenfone 5Z akan dibanderol sekitar 423 poundsterling (sekitar Rp 8 jutaan), namun untuk Zenfone 5 standar, Asus belum mengungkapkan harganya.
Liputan6.com, Barcelona - Asus telah resmi memperkenalkan tiga varian Zenfone 5 di gelaran Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018, yakni Zenfone 5Z, Zenfone 5, dan Zenfone 5 Lite. Dalam gelaran ini, perusahaan asal Taiwan itu menjadikan Zenfone 5 dan Zenfone 5 Lite jadi perhatian utama.
Sama seperti beberapa model sebelumnya, dua smartphone sebenarnya ini memiliki desain serupa. Perbedaan hanya terletak dari sisi spesifikasi hardware untuk mendukung performanya.
" Zenfone 5 dan Zenfone 5Z memiliki layar berukuran 6,2 inci dengan desain bezeless dan aspect ratio 19:9. Kendati demikian, secara keseluruhan, perangkat ini memilki ukuran tak ubahnya perangkat 5,5 inci," tutur Global Marketing Head Asus, Marcel Campos.
Zenfone 5Z menjadi smartphone pertama Asus yang menggunakan Snapdragon 845 dan sudah dibekali platform kecerdasan buatan. Performa smarpthone ini juga ditunjang RAM 8GB dan memori internal 256GB.
Sementara Zenfone 5 merupakan smartphone yang hadir sebagai perangkat kelas menengah. Karena itu, perangkat ini mengandalkan chipset baru kelas menengah dari Qualcomm, Snapdragon 636, untuk menunjang aktivitasnya.
"Kami sangat senang bekerja sama dengan Asus untuk menghadirkan kemajuan terbaru di perangkat mobile bagi konsumen melalui jajaran Zenfone 5," tutur President Qualcomm, Cristiano Amon di acara yang juga dihadiri Tekno Liputan6.com tersebut.
Asus juga membenamkan ASUS AI Boost, fitur yang dapat mengoptimalkan kinerja di Zenfone 5 dan Zenfone 5Z. Fitur ini berguna untuk memastikan perangkat dapat berjalan optimal saat bermain atau melakukan pekerjaan berat lainnya.
Liputan6.com, Barcelona - Asus resmi meluncurkan tiga smarpthone yang masuk dalam lini Zenfone 5 , yakni Zenfone 5Z, Zenfone 5, dan Zenfone 5 Lite. Menurut CEO Asus, Jerry Shen, ketiganya hadir dengan fitur yang lebih cerdas, desain layar bezeless , termasuk konfigurasi kamera ganda.
"Kami memulai proyek ZenFone empat tahun lalu, dengan gagasan untuk menciptakan kemewahan yang dapat dinikmati setiap orang," ujar Shen dalam gelaran Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2018, di Barcelona, Spanyol, yang juga Tekno Liputan6.com hadiri.
Hadir dengan spesifikasi paling tinggi, performa Zenfone 5Z sudah ditopang oleh prosesor terbaru milik Qualcomm, yakni Snapdragon 845. Untuk menunjang performa yang lebih mumpuni, perangkat ini juga sudah didukung Artificial Intelligence Engine (AIE).
Varian ini memiliki layar berukuran 6,2 inci dengan rasio screen-to-body 90 persen dan memiliki ukuran bodi yang compact , sebanding dengan smartphone berlayar standar 5,5 inci yang ada di pasaran.
"Kami menawarkan aspect ratio baru 19:9 di Zenfone 5, meski demikian ukurannya tak berbeda dari perangkat yang berukuran 5,5 inci," tutur Global Marketing Head Asus, Marcel Campos.
Sementara Zenfone 5 yang tampil sebagai perangkat kelas menengah dengan desain serupa Zenfone 5Z. Yang membedakan, smartphone ini dipersenjatai oleh Snapdragon 636.
Terakhir, ada Zenfone 5 Lite yang memiliki layar berukuran 6 inci. Untuk kali pertama, Asus menggunakan sistem 4 kamera, dengan komposisi dua kamera depan dan dua kamera belakang.
Ahead of today’s Zenfone 5 launch at Mobile World Congress 2018, Asus hosted a media briefing to tell us about its new phone and directly address the very familiar notch at the top of the device. “Some people will say it’s copying Apple,” said Marcel Campos, Asus’ global head of marketing, “but we cannot get away from what users want. You have to follow the trends.” So that’s settled: the iPhone-esque notch is now trendy and we’re all going to have to marvel at it across a diversity of Android devices, including the new Asus Zenfone.
If you’ve been able to keep track of all the various Zenfone releases from Asus so far, you’re ahead of me, because I’ve gotten lost in the cornucopia of slightly different models the company has issued in its brief history as a phone maker. Thankfully, the Zenfone 5 family is relatively simple: there’s the 6.2-inch Zenfone 5 itself, there’s the flagship Zenfone 5Z, which looks the same but amps up the internal specs, and there’s the Zenfone 5 Lite (branded as the Zenfone 5Q in the US), which has an entirely different design.
Grid View Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Compared to its own previous hardware, Asus has made a major leap forward in design. The Zenfone 5 fits a 6.2-inch display within the same physical footprint as the 5.5-inch Zenfone 4. That’s thanks to a thin-bezel design that results in a 90 percent screen-to-body ratio. In its effort to appear more advanced, Asus accompanies the screen with some spurious AI claims. The company has an automatic adjustment for color temperature — much like Apple’s True Tone on the iPhone X — and a sensor to keep the screen on while you’re looking at it, which it collectively calls AI Display. When I queried Asus on what’s “AI” about those functions, which already exist in other phones, I was told that the company is “adopting a broad definition of AI.”
The new Zenfone doesn’t feel too light or too heavy, weighing 155 grams, and it remains easily usable with one hand in spite of its large screen. Featuring an aspect ratio of 19:9, the Zenfone 5 is very similar to the Plus models of the Galaxy S8 and S9. Like those phones, Asus’ new handset has glass on both the front and back, however Asus settles for an LCD, less sophisticated than Samsung’s excellent OLED display. Still, the resolution of the Zenfone 5 is a perfectly reasonable 2246 x 1080, and the display’s performance doesn’t seem to be too far behind.
Like Apple’s iPhone X, Asus has a Face Unlock option on the Zenfone 5, but don’t get your hopes up for seeing anything as sophisticated as the Face ID system that resides inside the iPhone. Face Unlock is just there to satisfy user demand, and Asus notes that its new phone still has a fingerprint sensor as a fallback.
Asus goes for a less-than-flagship spec on the Zenfone 5 processor, using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 636, and on-board storage is limited to 64GB with a choice of 4GB or 6GB of RAM. The Zenfone 5Z steps up to a Snapdragon 845 system-on-chip, and has a maximum of 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM. The regular Zenfone 5 is evidently specced to try to achieve a more affordable price point — the 5Z will start at $499 / €479 — though it still has dual cameras on the rear and another batch of big AI claims from Asus.
My highlight from the Zenfone’s camera spec is the 1.4-micron pixel size on the main 12-megapixel image sensor. That’s equal to HTC’s U11 and not far behind the Google Pixel, and in a couple of sample shots I took with the phone, it seemed to be promising — a lot more promising than I might have expected from Asus.
Beside the main sensor, there’s an 8-megapixel wide-angle camera, which is used for depth detection for portrait mode. That didn’t work well in my testing: the camera would shoot a regular photo when I wanted a portrait, and when it did produce a portrait, the edges of the subject were quite rough and obvious. Asus augments all of this with what it calls AI scene detection, which optimizes the saturation, white balance, exposure, brightness, and post-processing based on the particular thing you’re photographing. This is actually the one part of the Zenfone 5 that probably merits the AI tag, because this is all based on machine learning. Asus has also built in a system that will learn from the way you process your images and, over time, will start suggesting similar edits to other photos you want to tweak.
Asus also claims it has a thing called AI boost, which sounds like selective overclocking of apps, and AI charging, which only tops up your Zenfone to 80 percent at night and then holds it there until your usual wake-up time approaches and then it goes all the way to 100. These are all quite handy features, but maybe the abuse of the AI label could have been avoided.
A final highlight with the Zenfone 5 is its built-in speaker system, which gets very loud and clear. Alas, it doesn’t have much in the way of bass or a high end, but if you like your speakers to be Bose-y like that, you’ll be in luck. For a phone, clarity and volume are often more important than pure audio quality, so I can’t fault Asus for its design choice. Support for AptX HD and LDAC, for higher-quality Bluetooth audio, is built in. Asus also includes a headphone jack on both the Zenfone 5 and Zenfone 5 Lite, which gives it a differentiating feature from the high-end phones the company’s obviously trying to emulate.
Grid View Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge
The Zenfone 5 Lite, pictured above, is a predictably simplified device. It bears little physical resemblance to the more premium phone, but it still comes with a 6-inch screen with thin bezels, the same 3,300mAh battery as on the Zenfone 5, and Android Nougat — not Android Oreo — as the operating system. The 5 Lite also has dual cameras on both the front and back, with the additional lenses providing a wider, 120-degree field of view for group photography.
Asus will release the Zenfone Lite in March, followed by the Zenfone 5 in April and then the Zenfone 5Z in June. Exact release dates have yet to be announced, but we’ll bring those to you as soon as they become official.
