ASUS Zenfone 8 Flip review: Cool camera feature is perfect for selfies

It’s seen as a staple of every smartphone, but this clever new “flip” phone could see the end of this important feature for good.

REVIEW

Maybe it’s just me, but I love weird phones and by weird I mean different or unique. Considering most phone designs these days have melded together, we often only see slight variations on different slabs of metal or plastic. But ever since ASUS launched the Zenfone overseas, with its unique flippy camera design, I have been in awe. And now, the ASUS Zenfone 8 Flip is launching in Australia.

I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t know ASUS was making mobile phones. Most Aussies know ASUS as a laptop brand and until recently most of their phone releases have only been overseas. So here’s an exciting chance for Aussies to check out a totally different kind of android phone.

Unboxing

The Zenfone 8 Flip comes with a USB-C charging cord and power brick, sim tool and phone case. The phone comes in two colours – Galactic Black or Glacial Silver with 256GB of storage.

The black version, which I have been using, looks awesome and has a smooth reflective polish, though it’s another phone that picks up fingerprints like crazy (on the back).

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Elly Awesome review Zenphone 8 Flip.

The screen is a huge 6.67 inch Full HD+ AMOLED display and a 90Hz refresh rate, which looks great. It’s also powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 5G (CPU) and Qualcomm Adreno 660 (GPU). The phone also has a dual sim tray, which is still pretty rare for a lot of phones, and expandable storage. Though it’s the cameras I want to focus on.

Cameras

Armed with three built-in cameras, the Zenfone 8 Flip boasts a mind-blowing 64MP main camera with up to 8K video recording capabilities, a 12MP ultra-wide camera and 12MP telephoto lens.

There is no front facing built-in selfie camera because all of these cameras can flip to the front of the phone.

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The smartphone has no front facing camera.

This is amazing but also kind of confronting as the 64MP camera is so high in quality that it has introduced me to numerous pores on my face that I didn’t know existed.

Jokes aside, it’s a welcome feature for taking photos of yourself and with so many people creating content for social media, the quality of a phone’s front camera is extremely important. I can’t tell you the amount of times I’ve been disappointed with a selfie camera’s quality and I wished I could more easily use a phone’s back cameras.

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Elly Awesome reviews the Zenphone 8 Flip.

Possibly what’s even more impressive though is that you don’t just have to have the camera module facing towards you (ie for selfies) or sitting in place in the back of the phone, it can be somewhere in between.

In fact, you can even use the camera module sort of as a tripod for your phone to prop it up on a table to take stable pictures from afar. There is even in-built software that allows you to set your favourite camera angle so when you go to take a photo you can tap which angle you’d like the cameras to be in, to save time.

This flip feature improves the ease of mobile videography and photography tenfold.

Battery Life

The Zenfone 8 Flip’s battery life is what you’d hope for, with an in-built 5000mAh battery (which explains the phone’s bulk). It can last you through a whole day but you’ll still need to charge it at night.

It also has 30W fast charging so it can get to just under 50 per cent charge in around 30 minutes, but I was disappointed with the lack of wireless charging capabilities.

Is it worth buying?

Overall, the Zenfone 8 Flip is rather expensive and a little heavy for its $1199 price point, especially compared to the Zenfone 8 sans mechanical flip cameras, which is also coming to market for $200 less.

However, I have to admit this is one of the coolest phones I have tested in a while and I love the showstopping flip camera feature, not only because of the attention it brings, but its functionality.

You can pick up the ASUS Zenfone 8 Flip from June 21.

Elly Awesome is an Aussie tech and lifestyle vlogger | @ellyawwesome | YouTube