love it or hate it the knotch is something that we're gonna see a lot
more of especially in 2018 more and more manufacturers that bring it out so what
was originally first started I think by essential phone they had that little
camera knotch there then Apple decided they would also release and not phone
then we've got other manufacturers copying including a ASUS here so this as
these in phone five and it has a 6.2 full HD knotch display so it's going to
be for me a bit of a learning curve that's gonna be my first notch phone now
they didn't make any other poor design choices and that's a bit of a compromise
with the knotch but at least they didn't skimp on other
things so we still have a micro SD card slot on this and we have a 3.5
millimeter headphone jack so that's good news
this is powered by the Snapdragon 6-3 6-4 gigabytes of RAM and 64 gigabytes of
storage the battery is 3300 milliamp hours now as those promises that this
has quite a decent and very capable camera setup on it so we've got dual
cameras on the rear so once 8 megapixels the other is 12 now that main sensor it
also has optical image stabilization for access and E is gyros stability to on
that it's got a I scene detection mode and the secondary camera which is that 8
megapixel one also helps out with bokeh blurred backgrounds a front-facing 8
megapixel selfie cam on here so let's get this one unboxed and check it out ok
so right here at the top it says we love photo that should say we love photos
shouldn't it but anyway so what we have inside this so this looks like this is
going to be all our paperwork like I said there's this erm tool oh we've got
a case that's great always good to have a case here and that's one of those
clear cases some of those TPU style ones so it's a relatively cheap case you can
see it doesn't cover the buttons but of course these cutouts for it and
fingerprint reading from the manufacturer to be an absolute perfect
fit now I would love to see all manufacturers doing this at least giving
us a cheap first case we can use straight away out of the box
so there is a quick little user guide in here that just goes over things so
there's your sim cards you've got to put in two nano sins or you've got to give
up of course one of those nano SIms for an SD card and you notice here
turrets is talking about NFC so yes this does have NFC support that's fine
so you just get the phone out of the way for a second and look at what else we
have in the box okay so I've got a lot of things in here actually so there's
the cable so let's type see the charger here a little hard to see but this is 5
volts to answer 10 watts maximum now it will support the phone quickly charge 3
so you can get up to 18 watts maximum charging rates if you use of course
another charger not this included one and we also get some in ear headphones
now this is great to see because a lot of manufacturers are now skimping on
this and they don't include these in the box anymore so it just comes in this
little protective slip so very nice design Wow that is nice in hand so the
back of it has 2.5 D class and I believe it is Gorilla Glass 4 they a using rear
fingerprint reader jewel tone LED flash both of the cameras here so the main
sense is 12 megapixels and as an F 1.8 aperture the auxilary sensor is 8
megapixels and this one has an F 2.0 aperture just like the front-facing
camera and with the phone powered off of course at the moment you can hardly see
that knotch at all so what the knotch has in it as
the air piece and then to the left of it as the proximity and ambient light
sensors and in the right the camera module the buttons on the right side
these are made out of metal the frame is all metal and it does have a nice
rounded edges and hand feels really good this is a premium phone bill quality is
excellent along the bottom you can see we've got a loudspeaker microphone type
C port and 3.5 millimeter headphone jack there now you can just see just here the
antenna line is one here and one just on the side on the left you'll find this
SIM tray now it doesn't have any dust proofing so there's no rubber gasket on
this it will take a micro SD card and nano SIM or a micro SIM and nano SIM
along the top we just have two antenna lines and in a secondary mic there's
actually a third microphone as well here you see on the top left hand side so
there's n phone five ways 169 grams and as eight point two millimeters thick now
that's without the camera bump with the camera bump then it is 8.8 millimeters
so very quick size comparison with two five point nine nine inch mobile phones
here so on the Left we've got the redmi note 5 from xiaomi and the said phone
there you can see is quite a bit shorter than that but it's not quite as short as
the me mix 2's on the right so in hand this phone feels great it definitely
feels premium I like the weight of it the balance of it the curved edges as
well make it all comfortable and the way that glass is reflecting there so let's
just power this on for the first time so there we go straight away you just
notice that night show that's gonna take a little while for me to get used to
this being my first phone here and I won't go through all the setup here
that's pretty obvious we'll just skip ahead now and have a look at the stock
apps but before we do I just wanted to point out something with this IPS panel
you can see especially with the not sure just on that corner there you can see
how there's a bit of what I like to call shadowing it's not bleed it's more just
like a darker picture there it's just manufacturing you notice that there at
the top so the top bezel yes it is quite slim and on my unit it's particularly
bad here just along the bottom you can see all of that shadowing that's
happening and of course those super rounded edges are gonna take a while for
me to get used to so the setup didn't take too long it's your typical Android
Oreo setup so you've got to go through a few things extra they ask you from some
Zen storage thing and Google Drive offer but that's about it so these the apps we
have on Zen UI what they've got pre-installed so it's not as bad as the
zenfone 3 ultra that I looked at it was just crammed full of so much rubbish on
here oK we've got Google Apps on there and the azuz folder oh that just pops up
so I don't like being nagged but with things but this is just a course going
to happen in the beginning okay the on screen keys here you can see navigation
at the bottom so in this folder web storage sees a few blower applications
on here means selfie master mobile manager I don't know what that is maybe
it's one of those antivirus things I think so yeah there's just a little bit
now I know I'm ranting on a little bit about the knotch but just have a look at
the way the time is aligned here right to the right I don't know why they have
done that so these are the things that my little things like there's that
actually bother me and look when you swipe down watch what happens see how
the time actually moved then a little bit so it move to the left a tiny little
bit so obviously there's just a few things with the UI the adjustments they
have to make to cater for that knotch so the phone is running android 8.0 and you
get approximately 52 gigabytes free on first boot so here's the antutu score
this is excellent for this chipset in fact the highest I have seen has come
out higher than the redmi note 5 now I did enable what's called the AI booster
that is on and what that really basically does it's not proper a I don't
think this is just marketing hype and gimmicks that they are using I mean even
call the charging AI charging but what this is doing I believe is just maxing
out the CPU governor so it's just in a performance mode and holding those core
clocks up really high here is the DRM in for a lot of people have been asking for
this recently so if you need to read all of this of course just pause right now
and triple check so it does support triple being Android 8 but it does not
support both system partitions a and B for seamless updates okay for speakers
we've got that downwards firing speaker that you have at the bottom that I
showed you at the start of the video and there's also one here so front firing
now this front firing one like other ones that also double up the earpiece as
a loudspeaker it's only really just mids and treble where you get more kind of
subs coming out of that one so I'll test it out now hundred percent volume and
we'll have a listen to how it sounds
so yes it is loud but at 100% volume it does distort and there's quite a bit of
distortion coming from the earpiece front-facing loudspeaker so I will
quickly test out pub G here you can see now set it to the high settings the
highest I can and the high frame rates are up to 60 frames per second so it is
really smooth and you can see with a map here that at least at the moment doesn't
seem to have any massive lag and yes it's running this game perfectly fine
you zoom in and there is no obvious lag to me there's a couple of little
stutters that you always expect to see and note that it doesn't have the knotch
there that it gets rid of it got the black borders either side it depends on
the apps of course the support but we still course get the corners cut off
from those super rounded corners that azouz have gone with so in general the
performance is good here with seen you I I'd have noticed that sometimes when you
swipe down here to get the notifications there is a tiny little bit of a stutter
there now there have been three over-the-air updates and it still hasn't
addressed the way that that clock is with it right up against on the
right-hand side so we'll take a look at the camera application here they have
hyped up the camera as being quite a decent camera here now we'll take some
sample photos and video and show you those in just a second well we'll go
through some of the modes here so first we've got the 12 megapixel sensor which
is the standard one the one that you can use all the time that has the for access
ISO and clicking this here is a slightly wider angle now you can see hopefully
here it's got a bit of a fish eye effect to it that lens because of slightly
wider and that's just the standard one there which doesn't have that of course
now you got your various different modes here for example this is the portrait
mode so depth effect with the blurred background and I'll just get out of that
and quickly show you to some of the other modes so if you swipe down that
brings up the filters and if you swipe up here you go into the different
various modes we've got here so we've got pro mode this is just the
interesting ones here I'll show you so we've got control of the white balance
exposure ISO shutter rate and your focus so that's great to have that there and
we've also got super resolution so what that's going to do is just stitch
together with the various images a 49 megapixel photo so you can capture maybe
a little bit more detail of course when you crop in I will test that and give
you a sample of that as well back into auto mode so
we do have slow motion and the different ones we've got here frame rates wise
we've got HD so 720p at 240 frames per second or HD at 120 frames per second
then for your standard video shooting modes we do have 60 frames per second
1080p and then all the way up to 4k 30 frames per second so this is a sample
shot with the front-facing camera you get 1080p Max and you see it does have
electronic image stabilization so it's quite good it's taking out the shakes
with me walking along here and it's doing a reasonably good job here you can
see there aren't many details there in fact the sky's not being captured at all
that that is very common so this has been shot on the main camera sensor so
that 12 megapixel one with an S 1.8 aperture it has 4 X s optical image
stabilization for stops and in 4k it doesn't seem to have any electronic
image stabilization focus is good so far my testing seems to be pretty much
spot-on no real focus hunting issues anything like that and you can see the
optical image stabilization working when I'm walking along right now you can see
it shaking around a little bit so not quite as smooth as electronic image
stabilization only
now stone port would be wide-angled lens so this one is only 1080p maximum 30
frames per second on that 8 megapixel sensor or the F 2.0 aperture but you
will notice that the stability because it is in 1080p and it is only electronic
image stability not optical but it actually comes out a lot more stable
here the footage
so I have tested out the fingerprint reader and the face unlocking face
unlocking seems to work quite well it's quickly the fingerprint reader as well
is very quick and it is a always on sensor and if you're into this sort of
thing there's also the Zen emojis not really a big fan of this but it's not
quite as good as Samsung's offering I found that the eyes and the mouth
doesn't seem to be quite as good the tracking all right so that's the zenfone
5 so to quickly recap here we've got a very good build quality it's premium the
glass on the rear is super slippery so be careful putting it on a table because
it will slip off fingerprint reader is always on and it's very fast and it
unlocks straightaway basically so that is good face unlocking as well as quick
in my testing there so camera performance
we can't take portrait photos they look okay to me some of the stitching isn't
quite perfect that's very frequent that it happens
with a lot of other manufacturers as well daylight photos look good low light
well it's not going to win any awards it's not the best thing but it certainly
is better than some mobile phones so for a premium mid-range I feel it's offering
quite a bit here but yes I'm gonna mention it you know I am the knotch
now it's not a good design move here I know I've ranted on about it but I feel
it's just a mistake why are they following this stupid trend because the
top bezel if they want to slim it down it can and I know it can be done right
we've seen it with Xiaomi's Mi Mix 2s and the Mi Mix 2 that you can have a
slim top bezel and you don't have to resort to a compromise like the knotch
which is rather ugly I'm not a fan of the hugely rounded corners either and I
do have on my screen some what I would say like shadows or darkening around
that I showed you in the beginning on this video which is not good to see we
don't want to have this especially with the price of this foam apart from that
yes the color reproduction of the screen is good it is super bright so it's
looking decent but it's really whether you want the knotch or not and for me
it's a little bit hard to live with considering we can't hide it where's the
option to hide at least put black either side of it but you can't do that anyway
I will be back for the full review of this one here with the battery life some
more camera performance reviews were photos and samples there
and just use it for two weeks so I hope to catch you then if you liked the video
please give a thumbs up and also subscribe to the channel for more up and
coming reviews bye for now