Scenario 1
You have been walking for hours, carrying all the “things” that “belong” to you on your back. Shedding all worries, feeling as light as a feather, appreciating the beauty in everything around you. After 5-6 hours however, those 10-12 kgs on the back, do not feel as light anymore. Step by step, it feels heavier and heavier. You start thinking of the stuff that you can discard. At every dustbin, maybe even throw away a pair of socks or two!
However, what you can not throw away, is the brick called the power bank!
Scenario 2
You have had the time of your life. The multi day trek has shown you sights you couldn’t believe exist, shown you strength you didn’t believe you had. You are now a “new you”. And yet, some things stay the same, like charging your phone. There is one power plug at the campsite. All you want is to crash into deep sleep.
Yet, you have to wait in the long queue of fellow trekkers waiting to charge their phones, their only means to share this experience with friends and family back home.
Both are scenarios we have experienced first hand. And wished and wished some more for a phone that didn’t need recharging every night.
And voila! Even before we returned from our travels to New Zealand, a “mystery box” was waiting for us to be opened.
To cut the long story short, it was a brand new Asus Zenfone Max!
It felt a little heavier than its Apple counterparts. But at 5000mAh battery capacity, we are not complaining! That’s almost half the capacity of our power bank brick at a fraction of the weight!
Plus, the Asus Zenfone Max comes with an OTG cable , making it easy to use as a power bank.
A full charge takes a few hours (it’s 5000mAh after all!). But we have to remember that even a miniscule 4% battery power means a few hours of regular usage of the Zenfone Max!
The make-or-break for us, while selecting a mobile phone is its camera quality.
A real Manual mode
The idea of using the manual mode in a mobile phone is still in its nascent stages. Though not a replacement for a DSLR camera, these options let us do some quick changes like the ISO, shutter speed and the colour temperature.
We went on a photo shoot, after sunset and captured similar photos with an Apple iPhone 6 (which is currently our point and shoot camera) and the Asus Zenfone Max.
These are some results
We were far behind a fence of the ground where the football game was on. The Zenfone Max camera captured the colours and the action of the tiny figures better than the iPhone 6.
The Zenfone gave better results when capturing the details in the petals and the depth in the colours of the flower.
The iPhone 6 captured the sky colours way better than the Zenfone Max. But even in low light, details like the basketball net were captured equally well by the Zenfone Max. There was no compromise in the sharpness.
The details of the texture of the dog fur is definitely better on the iPhone 6. But look how close the Zenfone Max goes to the iPhone 6!
The lens flare created by the iPhone 6 camera is reflective of the lens quality of the iPhone. But the sharpness of the trees in silhouette and the noise factor in both are comparable.
Can you identify the difference?
The success of the camera of the Zenfone Max is in the fact, that at almost the tenth the cost, it gave results comparable to the iPhone 6!
We are impressed with what we have seen of the phone so far. Are you?
You can order your Zenfone Max through Flipkart or Amazon.
Thank you Asus, for giving us this product to try on, and for paying close attention to the needs of us, travelers!
