The new Asus is the company’s latest attempt to take on Samsung’s flagship, but how does it compare?
The Asus ZenFone series has been around for half a decade. We would not be surprised to hear that some of you have not realized Asus makes phones, though.
Its ZenFone 6 is the one of most concerted efforts to change that since the series began in 2014. It’s a high-end, mid-price phone that wants to attract a few would-be Samsung Galaxy S10 owners.
It costs significantly less and has an eye-catching motorized camera that flips between roles as the main and selfie snapper. The Samsung Galaxy S10 can seem conservative next to it.
How do the two phones really compare? Let’s take a closer look.
The Samsung Galaxy S10 was announced in February 2019. Asus’s ZenFone 6 arrived in May 2019.
As of May, the Galaxy S10 costs around $799 (£699, AU$1349). The ZenFone 6 is significantly more affordable. It starts at $499 / £499 (about AU$725) although this has less RAM and storage than the base S10. It has 6GB RAM instead of 8GB and 64GB storage rather than 128GB.
You can bump these up. £549 gets you a ZenFone 6 with 128GB storage and 6GB RAM. The top model has 8GB RAM and 256GB storage, and costs £599.
Phone design seems to have reached a stable norm. High-end phones are made of metal and glass. Cheap phones are made of plastic, designed to look like metal and glass. Really expensive phones use curvier glass.
Glass and metal sandwiches are like, well, ham and cheese sandwiches.
The Samsung Galaxy S10 is one of the definitive examples of this in action. It has a dramatically curved glass front, which makes what small bezels exist seem to melt into the phone’s sides.
Asus’s ZenFone 6 is a little different. It front is much flatter. This style is often used by challenger manufacturers who want to make lower-cost Galaxy S10 (and co) alternatives.
News flash: flat glass is cheaper to produce and employ than the curved stuff. The ZenFone 6’s screen surrounds are still petite, but aren’t quite as slick-looking as Samsung’s.
In person the Galaxy seems a little more sophisticated and expensive. The ZenFone 6’s rear glass is curved, though, and the sides are aluminium. It still seems a swish, high-end mobile.
Other hardware features are similarly mixed. The Asus ZenFone 5 has a headphone jack. Samsung’s Galaxy S10 doesn’t. The S10 has IP68 water resistance, the Asus does not.
The Samsung Galaxy S10 and Asus ZenFone 6 screens are a little different too. You get a 6.1-inch display in the Samsung, a slightly larger 6.4-incher in the Asus. The real display differences aren’t about inch counts, though.
Samsung uses a punch hole in the Galaxy S10.
