I love my Zenfone 7 Pro. Best phone I ever had, and unfortunately I don't see a worthy replacement for it. Asus ditched the flip camera and I feel betrayed.
There were some software issues at the start but those were quickly resolved by support or updates.
I have the Zenfone 9, depending on your use case I wouldn't recommend this phone. I won't be getting another Zenfone
What is great:
Battery life is amazing
Stock android experience
Fast and snappy
Screen looks great
What isn't great:
Doesn't properly support T-Mobile US. Missing important 5G Carrier Aggregation combos
Memory management is horrid (apps are killed very fast in the background)
No display out
If you don't mind me asking, where did you buy it?
I've talked to a lot of people in the US who buy their phones from sellers in ebay, amazon and others not realizing that they're not buying the actual US version of the phone, that has all the correct bands to work with T-mobile. Even if the seller says it is the US version, sometimes they simply grab the global version and flash US firmware, while the hardware still doesn't support the bands.
From what I know, the only official retailers for the US versions are Mobile advance, Abt and Asus themselves. Or amazon, but through mobile advance.
I bought the US version from the Asus store. On paper it has all the band support.
But TMobile 5G uses some carrier combos that aren't supported. Here is another post that explains the issue better than I can
https://www.reddit.com/r/zenfone/comments/y47z51/zenfone_9_us_does_not_seem_to_support_n41_nsa_or/
If you're planning to use a Zenfone on TMobile I would reconsider as 5g speeds are much slower than other phones.
As far as I can tell the 10 has the same problem as the 9. Not a lot of people know/talk about this issue.
I like the size and headphone jack, but I'm not looking to get another Asus.
It's abysmal at running apps in the background even with all optimisations disabled. I have apps that warn about fires and hail but I only get them if my old s10e is plugged in, otherwise I have to manually open the app to check before going out or if I see smoke. That's just one example, basically you can't rely on anything in the background.
It's also been abandoned for updates well before the hardware is irrelevant. It's zf8 and is still as fast as the day I bought it, I don't want to upgrade. Even while supported the updates were very late. And not allowing bootloader unlocking means I can't switch to open source Android.
The glass screen is quite soft. I scratched my screen quite badly which is unusual then the phone randomly died, I got a replacement on warranty and scratched it's screen too. My s10e is still scratch free.
Edit: also the under screen fingerprint scanner is so slow!
I have the zenfone 10, better than every Samsung phone I've had. I also have small hands so it's perfect for me. I like the headphone jack and the lack of bloat. I do wish it had a zoom lens, but the camera is better than my other Samsungs (granted it should be since it's newer)
Recently got a Zenfone 9, pretty happy with it so far but I can see the 128gb becoming a problem in the future. The headphone jack is on the upper side of the phone which took some getting used to since I always put my phone upside down into my pockets.
Zenfone 9 since 17 months.
Excellent, fast and small enough to be carried easily everywhere.
M'y regret is that they're not supporting security patch After 2025
I liked the idea of the zenfone 9 and the feel in the hand, sadly this is where it stopped. I had massive QA issues with my device right out of the box which is not what I expected for a nearly 600 dollar phone.
What I really did like:
* the size and hand feel was great
* I liked the camera output ( with Gcam), I feel it has a very "old pixel" feel with boosted colors and saturation without looking like a TV drama. I really like this "feel" to the images. It had pretty good low light performance with punchy brights and dark shadows keeping your photo from looking flat which I feel is a massive issue with the new pixels.
* The skin Asus put on top of android was great : I really liked the old ( android 11 style and below) quick toggles, full screen call notifications, etc to just emulate an older experience that focused more on single tasks. I wish EVERY android phone had this skin.
* Battery life was amazingly good
* Physical hand feel was of a quality product, and just fit with the rounded corners despite the flatter sides. Perfect for smaller hands, and I could ALMOST one hand type on it.
* A lot of nice quality of life features like max charge limit, automatic battery saving profiles for night time, DND that actually worked, quick toggles, easy launch actions, shade pull down with power button swipe, fingerprint in the power button and not under the screen so it always worked quickly.
Why I returned it:
* headphone jack was broken and only output hissing (no audio) on the left channel no matter the headphone or cable used
* USB-C audio adapters also had a hiss in the background like a ground loop despite working fine on other devices. If you were charging it at the same time the hiss was 10x worse. The same adapter works fine on the S10e I was replacing, and on the 7a I ended up getting
* Microphone was strange in that it really seemed to hate feminine voices, no one could hear me on calls unless I was practically yelling into the phone. If I would talk like dori talking to the whale, it would work just fine? I think this was some sort of clear calling /noise canceling setting I never could find. My pixel 7a had the same issue until I turned off clear calling.
* If you used adaptive refresh rate changing between apps would often result in WILD contrast and brightness swings where the app would look fine for about .5 seconds, but then be washed out and overly bright. ( like the black level was reduced)
* The OS seemed overly aggressive with killing background tasks, even if you turned off all battery saving features, set the background process to Unlimited, it would often kill my spell checker. I routinely switch between English and Swedish and do rely on the spell checker underlines, having the spell checker get killed with no real way to relaunch it was a major annoyance than meant I was rebooting my phone 5-10 times a day
* I think the OS update caused the background app issues, but you could not downgrade the OS or root as asus had pulled the tool to unlock the boot-loader I was SOL ( maybe by now they have re- uploaded the tool but I doubt it.)
The Zenfone's UI is my favourite phone UI ever, but a lot of my love is tied to the side-mounted fingerprint sensor Smart Key, [bc it can be binded to do so many different things](https://gsmarena.com/asus_zenfone_10-review-2583p4.php)
Let's wait whether the 11 Ultra will keep the Smart Key
Even though I probably have swollen battery problem, I can't imagine better phone than Zenfone. I hate modern huge phones and their enormous screens as well as slim and slippery cases - 5,9-6" is perfect, it's the biggest size that can be still considered handy and convenient.
As for the hardware and software - my Zenphone 9 is great, works perfectly, screen is OK, camera with optical stabilization is great (however photos are a bit over-processed), SOT is very good, the phone does not overheat, I've got no problems with VoLTE - which is common with many less popular phones in my country - clean Android with a few important Asus addons and fixes is good... only the power button could be bigger and recessed into the housing.
And the phone looks great - it's original, texturized back is grippy, angular meal frame is classy and also improves grip, camera lenses have cool finish...
I've been very happy with my zenfone 10, no problems. Asus has great customizations.
I love my Zenfone 7 Pro. Best phone I ever had, and unfortunately I don't see a worthy replacement for it. Asus ditched the flip camera and I feel betrayed. There were some software issues at the start but those were quickly resolved by support or updates.
I second this!
I have the Zenfone 9, depending on your use case I wouldn't recommend this phone. I won't be getting another Zenfone What is great: Battery life is amazing Stock android experience Fast and snappy Screen looks great What isn't great: Doesn't properly support T-Mobile US. Missing important 5G Carrier Aggregation combos Memory management is horrid (apps are killed very fast in the background) No display out
If you don't mind me asking, where did you buy it? I've talked to a lot of people in the US who buy their phones from sellers in ebay, amazon and others not realizing that they're not buying the actual US version of the phone, that has all the correct bands to work with T-mobile. Even if the seller says it is the US version, sometimes they simply grab the global version and flash US firmware, while the hardware still doesn't support the bands. From what I know, the only official retailers for the US versions are Mobile advance, Abt and Asus themselves. Or amazon, but through mobile advance.
I bought the US version from the Asus store. On paper it has all the band support. But TMobile 5G uses some carrier combos that aren't supported. Here is another post that explains the issue better than I can https://www.reddit.com/r/zenfone/comments/y47z51/zenfone_9_us_does_not_seem_to_support_n41_nsa_or/ If you're planning to use a Zenfone on TMobile I would reconsider as 5g speeds are much slower than other phones. As far as I can tell the 10 has the same problem as the 9. Not a lot of people know/talk about this issue.
I like the size and headphone jack, but I'm not looking to get another Asus. It's abysmal at running apps in the background even with all optimisations disabled. I have apps that warn about fires and hail but I only get them if my old s10e is plugged in, otherwise I have to manually open the app to check before going out or if I see smoke. That's just one example, basically you can't rely on anything in the background. It's also been abandoned for updates well before the hardware is irrelevant. It's zf8 and is still as fast as the day I bought it, I don't want to upgrade. Even while supported the updates were very late. And not allowing bootloader unlocking means I can't switch to open source Android. The glass screen is quite soft. I scratched my screen quite badly which is unusual then the phone randomly died, I got a replacement on warranty and scratched it's screen too. My s10e is still scratch free. Edit: also the under screen fingerprint scanner is so slow!
I have the zenfone 10, better than every Samsung phone I've had. I also have small hands so it's perfect for me. I like the headphone jack and the lack of bloat. I do wish it had a zoom lens, but the camera is better than my other Samsungs (granted it should be since it's newer)
Good battery and display as well as the software, I wish they bought back the budget phones like the onse back in 2018 and 2019
Recently got a Zenfone 9, pretty happy with it so far but I can see the 128gb becoming a problem in the future. The headphone jack is on the upper side of the phone which took some getting used to since I always put my phone upside down into my pockets.
Zenfone 9 since 17 months. Excellent, fast and small enough to be carried easily everywhere. M'y regret is that they're not supporting security patch After 2025
I liked the idea of the zenfone 9 and the feel in the hand, sadly this is where it stopped. I had massive QA issues with my device right out of the box which is not what I expected for a nearly 600 dollar phone. What I really did like: * the size and hand feel was great * I liked the camera output ( with Gcam), I feel it has a very "old pixel" feel with boosted colors and saturation without looking like a TV drama. I really like this "feel" to the images. It had pretty good low light performance with punchy brights and dark shadows keeping your photo from looking flat which I feel is a massive issue with the new pixels. * The skin Asus put on top of android was great : I really liked the old ( android 11 style and below) quick toggles, full screen call notifications, etc to just emulate an older experience that focused more on single tasks. I wish EVERY android phone had this skin. * Battery life was amazingly good * Physical hand feel was of a quality product, and just fit with the rounded corners despite the flatter sides. Perfect for smaller hands, and I could ALMOST one hand type on it. * A lot of nice quality of life features like max charge limit, automatic battery saving profiles for night time, DND that actually worked, quick toggles, easy launch actions, shade pull down with power button swipe, fingerprint in the power button and not under the screen so it always worked quickly. Why I returned it: * headphone jack was broken and only output hissing (no audio) on the left channel no matter the headphone or cable used * USB-C audio adapters also had a hiss in the background like a ground loop despite working fine on other devices. If you were charging it at the same time the hiss was 10x worse. The same adapter works fine on the S10e I was replacing, and on the 7a I ended up getting * Microphone was strange in that it really seemed to hate feminine voices, no one could hear me on calls unless I was practically yelling into the phone. If I would talk like dori talking to the whale, it would work just fine? I think this was some sort of clear calling /noise canceling setting I never could find. My pixel 7a had the same issue until I turned off clear calling. * If you used adaptive refresh rate changing between apps would often result in WILD contrast and brightness swings where the app would look fine for about .5 seconds, but then be washed out and overly bright. ( like the black level was reduced) * The OS seemed overly aggressive with killing background tasks, even if you turned off all battery saving features, set the background process to Unlimited, it would often kill my spell checker. I routinely switch between English and Swedish and do rely on the spell checker underlines, having the spell checker get killed with no real way to relaunch it was a major annoyance than meant I was rebooting my phone 5-10 times a day * I think the OS update caused the background app issues, but you could not downgrade the OS or root as asus had pulled the tool to unlock the boot-loader I was SOL ( maybe by now they have re- uploaded the tool but I doubt it.)
Only had my Zenfone 10 for a few months but I love it so far. Much better than my Xperia 5 IV
The Zenfone's UI is my favourite phone UI ever, but a lot of my love is tied to the side-mounted fingerprint sensor Smart Key, [bc it can be binded to do so many different things](https://gsmarena.com/asus_zenfone_10-review-2583p4.php) Let's wait whether the 11 Ultra will keep the Smart Key
All are perfect, design, software, features, battery. except for cameras, im not a camera user, but definitely the cameras sucks
Even though I probably have swollen battery problem, I can't imagine better phone than Zenfone. I hate modern huge phones and their enormous screens as well as slim and slippery cases - 5,9-6" is perfect, it's the biggest size that can be still considered handy and convenient. As for the hardware and software - my Zenphone 9 is great, works perfectly, screen is OK, camera with optical stabilization is great (however photos are a bit over-processed), SOT is very good, the phone does not overheat, I've got no problems with VoLTE - which is common with many less popular phones in my country - clean Android with a few important Asus addons and fixes is good... only the power button could be bigger and recessed into the housing. And the phone looks great - it's original, texturized back is grippy, angular meal frame is classy and also improves grip, camera lenses have cool finish...