The ASUS ZenFone 7 Pro Review: The Triple Flip-Camera
by Andrei Frumusanu on September 1, 2020 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Asus
- Smartphones
- ZenFone 7
- ZenFone 7 Pro
System Performance
System performance of the ZenFone 7 Pro is quite a bit more straightforward than what we’ve seen last week on the ROG Phone III – the mainstream device lacks the more complicated performance modes that the gaming-oriented sibling exposes to its users. Instead, we’re seeing a relatively simplified choice in regards to refresh rates: 60 or 90Hz, and a “high performance” mode.
Unfortunately, this high-performance mode functions the same as the higher performance X-modes on the ROG Phone III in that it essentially just disables DVFS and just runs the SoC at maximum frequencies all the time. It’s not a mode that I would recommend anybody to run their phone on, unless you really don’t care at all about battery life.
In PCMark’s web-browsing test the scores essentially line up with the refresh rate, and the ZenFone 7 Pro tracks the results of the ROG Phone III at 60Hz, and landing in-between at 90Hz.
In the important writing test, the ZenFone also performed extremely well and represented amongst the better Snapdragon 865 devices.
Photo editing is also performing excellently and again slightly ahead of some other S865 phones.
The data-manipulation scaled with the refresh rate bump so it means the ZenFone is able to render frames within the expected 12ms frame-time limit.
Overall, the ZenFone 7 Pro performed quite well in PCMark and there’s not much we can complain about in regards to its performance.
One thing I need to make note is that I’ve noticed that ASUS is doing some sort of benchmark detection on its phones. On both the ROG Phone III and this new ZenFone 7 Pro I’ve noted that the system detected PCMark. Unlike other detection mechanisms that raise performance in benchmarks, ASUS’s behaviour here seems to have been to force the 60Hz mode, even when 90Hz was enabled in the settings. Using an anonymised version of PCMark bypassed the detection and I was able to get the 90Hz scores and battery life tests. I’ve reached out to ASUS for comment on this, and I’ll update the matter when I hear back a response.
In WebXPRT3 the ZenFone 7 Pro performed significantly better than the ROG Phone III – I’m not sure what’s changed on the OS side of things but it looks like the ZenFone is slightly more aggressively tuned for performance by default.
Speedometer 2.0 also doesn’t showcase the same performance oddities as seen on the ROG Phone III and we get top scores here.
Similarly, JetStream 2 lands where we expect it to.
Overall, performance of the ZenFone 7 Pro is excellent and top-notch amongst current flagship devices. It doesn’t have the 120 or 144Hz refresh rate of some other phones in the market, but 90Hz already marks the biggest jump in user experience, and thanks to the 200Hz touch sampling rate it also gives the feel of an extremely responsive device.
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JfromImaginstuff - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Seriously, doing away with the headphone jack in exchange for 5G. Might as well go with Samsungs.yu - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Yeah they say 5G antennas are small, sometimes they omit the fact that you need more than a dozen of them.melgross - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
You need from three to five, depending on whether you’re using sub mm bands or not, not dozens.Quantumz0d - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
It's 100% b.s LG V60 and Sony Xperia Mark II both of them are 5G and LG even has full U.S band support with mmWave technology as well and has a superior Audio performance from the standalone RFI shielded high end ESS9219 DAC chipset (ESS9218P was being featured in LG phones from V30 and up) and both of them have IP68 rating along with Qi charging too. The fact that Note 20 gets a full blown Silo for the S-Pen makes so fucking ground for these lying bastards. Removing jack is saving pennies and forcing them to buy accessories which also die out due to the Li-Ion technology.5j3rul3 - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
Can anyone describe how to understand the ∆E ITP and ∆E ITP LC value？I did use ∆E 2000 with Gamma 2.2 for long time, but even searching in google, the data just saying about Rec.2100, EOTF, PQ, HLG and ITU-R....
I knew ∆E ITP is a part of Rec.2100 HDR...but, the info I really want to know is the relationship between ∆E ITP (LC) and real world.
∆E 2000 < 1：Great and almost perfect
∆E 2000 < 2：so hard to see the difference and it's good enough for professional users
∆E 2000 < 3：good for general users
∆E 2000 < 5：ok for general users but still has noticebal color difference
∆E 2000 > 7：esay to see the color difference
Can ∆E ITP and ∆E ITP LC use those standards (0 ~ 1 ~ 2 ~ 3 ~ 5 ~ 7 ~)?
Andrei Frumusanu - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
dE ITP is a new standard that takes into account more modern reproduction formats such as HDR. Generally ITP is a little more sensitive than the 2000 standard to colour deviations: https://kb.portrait.com/help/about-deltae-edE ITP LC as I use it in the new reviews is simply a luminance compensated value, meaning that the error value ignores the luminance error and only looks at hue and chromacity. This makes sense for example in this review here as the ZenFone is targeting a 2.4 gamma by default, however our measurements are against a 2.2 gamma target. So the dE LC values are always going to be lower since it ignoers that part of the colour inaccuracy.
Under dE ITP of 1 it's imperceptible, under 3 it becomes acceptable when not viewed next to each other, and over 10 means it's horribly wrong.
5j3rul3 - Thursday, September 3, 2020 - link
Thank you @Andrei, the reply is really helpful!!!Now I can read the Calman's color calibration charts and info well based on that very useful knowledge, and easy to judge which device can provide great display quality.
Two more things I was wondering in this article:
1. The devices that Anandtech had reviewed such as Mate 20, iPhone XR, Xperia 1 even Surface Pro or XPS13, will get the updated display quality review based on the new delta ITP (LC) standard?
2. ASUS ZenFone 7 Series has a telephoto camera that has very similar spec to HUAWEI and Honor devices' (OV8856, 1/4.4", 1 um, F2.2, 80 mm{, OIS}, with terrible PDAF). It brings 3X Optical Zoom to ASUS smartphone first time and I'm expecting the 3X OZ camera can shows on ZenFone 7 Pro's review. This will be interesting if we have a comparison between ZF7P, 1+7P, M30P, P30 those who having a 3X OZ camera.....is there any opportunity to see this kind of comparison?
in the end, I really thank to AnandTech's great quality reviews!!!
shabby - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
"This is something that ASUS actively acknowledges as being a deliberate design choice so that that they could fit in more components and a larger battery"Did they forget about the headphone jack?
drexnx - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
>made phone huge for more componentsoh yeah we couldn't throw the 3.5mm jack in there, not enough room. The 5 gees, you know, they take up too much space.
Hamm Burger - Tuesday, September 1, 2020 - link
I thought that the unexpectedly low battery life might be because this phone did mm-wave 5G. Bit no: having dug up the specs, the highest 5G frequency band it can handle is 3.3–4.2GHz.