ASUS Zenfone 8

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Until recently, I had owned only 4 mobile phones (chronologically):

1. Ericsson (not owned by Sony then), a secondhand phone dad gave me. Thereafter, I bought my own phones.

2. Nokia. Can't remember the model number but naturally it was a 'brick' phone :D

3. Nokia 5250.

4. Samsung J1 Ace (J111F), which was purchased nearly 4.5 years ago.

Unfortunately, my entry-level smartphone fell victim to a side effect of the Covid-19 pandemic: it didn't have enough space for the running of necessary apps. Can't even consider any "nice to have" app. The death knell is probably the phasing out of hard OTP token by DBS and thus the necessity to install their digibank app even if it's just to use the digital OTP generator. That app takes up an incredibly memory space of nearly 0.9 GB!

Henceforth, I had to skimp on apps. I couldn't even update apps without clearing cache so that my phone had at least 500 MB before Google Play allowed the update to be installed. Sometimes some apps stopped working. Sometimes photos and videos couldn't load up.

So with a heavy heart, I bit the bullet and started searching for a suitable replacement. Criteria:

1. Decent memory space, of course.

2. Small/compact, preferably light too. It's a must, so that it can fit into my pants' pocket. Small guy -> small pocket.

3. 5G capability, so that I can use this phone as long as possible.

From my previous research, I learned that the fastest way is to simply search for reviewers' choice of top small/compact smartphones and start from there. All of them stated that such phones are getting rarer ("going the way of the dodo" 😢). I read about 10 of them and these 6 phones featured in all of them (in no particular order): iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 12 mini, iPhone SE (2020), Google Pixel 4a, Google Pixel 5 and ASUS Zenfone 8.

The Pixel phones were only 4G capabled and their 5G versions were larger. iPhone's price tag would send me straight to hospital. So that left Zenfone 8, which was hailed as the best compact Android smartphone, in all the reviews. 

For a detailed review of Zenfone 8, read this GSMArena's article.

I ordered from ASUS Mobile Official Store, which I found via ASUS's official website. Unlike the usual 3-day grace to ask for refund/return on Shopee, this had a 15-day period upon receipt of the phone. 

Cost RM 2,200. I visited the doctor that day.

Phone arrived two days later. So fast!

Loved the extra buffer!

This is a freebie, on top of a bumper case already included with the phone.



Still larger than my old phone but what to do. Sigh. Other phones would have been much larger.

I was worried about these faint lines that were on each side of the phone, thinking that it's a sign of defect but it turns out that they're supposed to be there, juding from the photos in the GSMArena article.

It's been about a week since I started using this phone. Pretty happy about it. Hopefully it'll last long, without problem....please.

Comments

William said…
Hope you'll be happy with the smartphone!
February 24, 2022 at 2:29 PM
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