Chinese smartphones are the way to go when you want to have the best of everything – processor, storage and camera, the ASUS PadFone S is going to change your perspective, while the unboxing video has just went up to our YouTube channel, we are already halfway through the review with the most awesome smartphone that ASUS has ever made, the PadFone S is going to make sure that cheap Chinese smartphones don’t get in the company’s way.
ASUS PadFone S First Look & Unboxing Video
ASUS Padfone S Hardware Specifications
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 MSM8974AB 2.3GHz Quad-Core
RAM/ROM: 2GB/16GB with MicroSD expansion
Display: 5″ Full HD 1920 x 1080 IPS with Corning Gorilla Glass 3
Camera: 13MP PixelMaster f/2.0 Five Element lens (Main), 2MP (Front)
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11 b/g/n/ac, BT 4.0 LE, NFC, Qi Wireless Charging
Networks: LTE/DC-HSPA+/GSM
Battery: 2300 mAh
Impressive hardware performance and awesome user experience
While it’s only a few days we’ve spent our time with the PadFone S, we’ve totally fallen in love with the phone. Granted, we have been very favorable towards ASUS’s Zenfone line ups in our past reviews, the Padfone S is totally a different category from the company’s lifestyle oriented Zenfones, the Padfone S has a much more serious design and doesn’t have blings and sparkles to attract the typical user, but what lies under the hood is power that you will truly appreciate.
Although the PadFone S doesn’t possess a super slim and sleek form factor, it’s thickness and size gives a really good grip on hand, the phone has been made with an aluminum frame with a brushed metal finishing on the sides, its backcover is made of polycarbonate which we have always loved on Lumia devices. The phone may feel slightly heavy for the average user but definitely manageable for guys like you and me, aesthetically it is already trying to give us an impression that this is a device made for the power user.
After turning on the phone, we are greeted by the familiar Zen UI which we’ve always commended, at this point of time you’re not going to expect Android 5.0 Lollipop (we’d surprised if it does) out of the box, ASUS has been really great at providing software updates in the past so we expect the company to deliver the OS update in a similar time frame with other smartphone makers. Zen UI used to work well on Zenfones that we’ve reviewed back then, thanks to the Snapdragon 801 processor on the Padfone S, ZenUI works even more fluidly and makes the phone’s experience very enjoyable.
The phone’s display quality is very pleasant, haivng 441 PPI of pixel density means you’ll get to watch movies with great clarity and text are as sharp as fine print, you don’t need to have a Quad HD display on it because it already looks superb with accurate color saturation and great brightness that gives good visibility under direct sunlight.
While you eagled eye readers should have noticed that the Padfone S isn’t using the AC variant of the Snapdragon 801 CPU which can be found on some other flagships out there, you have a 200MHz slower base clock speed and a slightly slower GPU onboard, real world performance is simply fine and you shouldn’t complain that minimal difference except in graphics intensive gaming, which you will still notice minor lags during gameplay.
Overall, we are very happy with the PadFone S, it is one of the best smartphones out there that can easily take on flagship smartphones. At this time of writing ASUS hasn’t passed us the tablet station which we will report in a later post so stay tuned.
Before we really forget, the PadFone S supports Qi Wireless Charging.
Camera Samples and Benchmarks
We’ve experienced lower resolutions of the PixelMaster camera back in a few reviews, the Padfone S now employs a five element lens Sony camera sensor with the company’s PixelMaster technology onboard, the first thing you’ll definitely notice on the camera is the super smooth frame rates as you pan the device around.
The camera software also maintains the same set of shooting modes that we’ve always loved, autofocus and shutter speeds are fast, you’ll be impressed by the camera’s performance in both outdoor and low light shooting, find out some of our early camera samples down below and stay tuned for more coming right up.
Benchmarks is something that doesn’t take a lot of time doing and the Padfone S has scored impressive results in Antutu, 3DMark and PCMark for Android, given the phone’s slower CPU, you’d expect it to score lower than other flagship smartphones but nonetheless, real world performance is still the main aspect in judging a phone’s performance.
Early Verdict – The Padfone S is one hell good smartphone
If there’s a word better than awesome we’d use it, the Padfone S is going to make everybody scream with excitement, not only it is impressive in its hardware performance and quality, it’s RM 899 price tag is going to make many smartphone makers worry and it only costs an additional RM 499 for the phone’s tablet station, you get a high performance smartphone and tablet in an extremely affordable package. The Padfone S is now available at all local resellers nationwide with very limited number of stocks, do stay tuned for our full review of the ASUS Padfone S coming soon.
