Apple might not believe it anymore, but small phones are great. I miss when mini
phones are around, and I think it's one of the reasons why I like flip style
phones that you can still have a whole phone package just condensed into a
small body. I don't want to carry around a 7-in tablet. Remember the Samsung
Galaxy Mega? That thing was nuts. This is the ASUS Senphone 10. And right away,
I want to comment on the green of the phone cuz it's beautiful. But let's take a look and see what else is in this box.
Here we have a USBC to C cable and it
looks like that standard 3 ft and it's made of that plaster sceny kind of
plastic. And we also have a charging brick.
Wow. Wow. That is something special. And it
is a 30 watt charger as well, which is the speed that the phone can charge at.
So, it's great that they give it a fast charger in the box. Not something you see very often. And here I'm assuming
it's all the warnings telling you that the phone is danger. Oh, it comes with a
case. And it's not even the default clear one that you get with all the budget phones. Let's see. Oh, this does
not feel nice. Flimsy, but we'll we'll try it on. You know, looks can be
deceiving. User guide and a SIM popper, which we'll take to see what's inside
here. Maybe it has an SD card slot, cuz that would be that'd be crazy. And man,
this green is gorgeous. I love it. It's like a sage green. It reminds me of
recycling. I really like it. This is actually one of my favorite shades of green. To compare it to the Xen Phone 9,
looks extremely similar. I prefer this new kind of more minimal backing design
compared to last year. Last year used to say it had the nine and the big zen
phone on the bottom. I really like the A. I mean, I've already talked about it
enough, but I like the A on this, but everything looks pretty darn similar
otherwise. I also like the texture of it. It's a little bit grippy. It almost
feels like an egg carton or something. You kind of hear again when I put my
fingers over it. And then a big ASUS Zen phone on it so you know exactly what
phone you have. And a little red arrow pointing to the cameras. I like the
uneven camera bump as well. It really showing that they're taking what they
need. That main camera has a bigger bump than the secondary camera there. I like
it. I like the look. On the front, we have our 5.92
in screen. This is a 144 Herz AMOLED
screen, which bodess well that it's going to look really good. So, we'll we'll take a look at that when we get it
powered on. But right away, this is holdable. Like really good reaching to
all sides, even with kind of still gripping the phone. The others, though, you still might have to do a little bit
of a balancing act to get to the top of the phone. I don't think it's that bad at all. Very, very nice and very light.
Let's weigh it and see what how much it weighs. 177 grams. I think it's
advertised as 172. So, you know, there's a little bit of a margin error there. But either way, feels very light in the
hand and very very portable. I I don't feel like you really notice this in your
pocket. And that's coming from somebody who is again using a flip phone. These
feel very similar just in different shapes. Opened up. It is quite a bit
smaller. And I I actually enjoy it though. Again, flip phones are kind of
the best of both worlds in portability and screen size. On our metal side rails
here, we have our fingerprint scanner and power button, our volume rocker and
antenna lines. On the top, we have antenna lines and a headphone jack. On
the left, we got nothing but antenna lines. And on the bottom, we have our SIM tray, a little mic hole, USBC, and
speaker. So, we have a dual SIM slot. Great for people who travel or have a
work phone number and a personal and don't want two devices. Getting pretty
common, but always appreciated with that. As you note, it does not have an
SD card slot. So, you're stuck with what you get. And you might have noticed that little bit of rubber in the sim tray.
This is water resistant IP68, so you'll be fine with dropping in the pool. Take
all the pool picks you want. Underneath this Gorilla Glass Victus is a 4,300 mAh
battery, which should last you quite a bit. We had laps take a look and we'll talk about that later. But well, I think
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while this is turning on, let's try out the case. Well, you know what? I kind of like the look. It's going to protect the
camera bump there. As you see, the cameras aren't popping out or anything like that. It's got the cutouts for
everything you need. It actually does not feel bad in the hand. Whether or not it's going to protect your phone, like
maybe not, but even protecting it from that little bit of a lip on the screen
and the camera is nice. But I got to say it does feel good in the hands,
especially for an included case. Hey, powering the Xen Phone 10, we have the
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 that we're seeing in all the flagships and we know performs
amazingly, so that's great to see. And then we have the 16 gigs of RAM and 512
gigs of storage model, but you can get an 8 gig and 128 gigs of storage model
or a 8 and 256. It would have been great if they SD card slot, but what can you
do? This is also running on Android 13. They promised two major OS updates and
four years of security updates and it has 5G Wi-Fi 7 capabilities as well as
Bluetooth 5.3. So for a modern phone, this is looking pretty great. One thing
that's really neat about the system preferences is they actually have a way to switch between stock Android and then
ASUS optimized. So, if you click on the more for ASUS Optimize, you can actually
change some of the features to be whether they're like on stock Android or
this new skin, as well as just how you want to change your volume to work, how
you want your incoming calls to work, even just the size of the clock in the
main screen. One thing I think a lot of people will want to change or experiment
with is the quick settings panel. So, you can have it be again like stock
Android or this new ASUS optimized way. Taking a look at it though, this looks
like the old Android way of just having circles for everything versus the kind
of big panel that the new stock Android has. I think the old way looks a lot
better where you have a lot more information on screen versus these big bubbles. So, I would probably actually
use this ASUS optimized panel, but it's nice that they give you the option
through all of these different settings. Let's try setting up the fingerprint
scanner and seeing how fast it is. I've got high hopes here. One thing is that the buttons a little bit hard to find
cuz it's pretty recessed in there and like pressing it with the tip of my
finger is a little challenging. But yeah, that's a really good fingerprint scanner. I like that a lot. That's
pretty much it for software. It's just pretty basic Android. They don't add a
whole lot. Looking through the apps here. It's pretty much just whatever we added from our Labs testing. So, let's
get into testing the display with some Crab Rave.
It sounds pretty good. I would say it sounds very clear. It does have stereo
speakers, so it's using the earpiece as well as the bottom speaker to give you a
bit more of a wider sound stage. I wouldn't say there definitely is a whole
lot of separation, but it doesn't sound like it's only coming out of this bottom speaker, which is great. As for clarity,
sounds good. There's a bit of bass there and everything like that. Though, I do wish it got a bit louder. They might
have reduced the volume so it doesn't get to that crackly level, which I guess
is a fine trade-off. I just wish they were able to find a way to make it a bit louder. As for the display, it's an
AMOLED. Everything looks deep and clear, and the colors look really punchy. I'm
sure there's settings in there where you can change the vibrance of the screen, but I'm somebody who usually leaves
everything on default, and I think it looks really, really good. Now, let's
talk about cameras. 4K. All right, these
big bad boys on the back are some beefy cameras. We have a 50 megapixel main
camera that has OIS and our 13 megapixel
ultrawide. Some people prefer a telephoto, but I feel like I use my
ultrawide quite a bit more. And this is 120° one, so everything looks pretty
wide without too much distortion on the outside. but we'll take a couple
pictures and see. One of the big selling features about this phone is the hybrid
gimbal system in this main camera. So, we have normal OIS, standard view, which
is using EIS, hyper steady, and adaptive. And to keep adaptive simple,
pretty much just changes through those different OIS modes to give you the best
shot possible depending on how much you're shaking. As you see, we switched to the black one here as this one I took
outside and took some photos as I wanted to keep the green looking pristine. So,
let's take a look and see what I was able to capture. It's a bright day today. Finally, summer here in Vancouver
and the colors are looking good. We get the pink of the flowers with the green
and yellows of the leaves and grass. It does seem to lose a little bit of detail
and the grass on the side of the planter, but nothing looks too too bad.
The dynamic range looks pretty solid. This second photo here is the same image
just with the 50 megapixel mode. And I like the contrasty look just a little
bit more. I don't know if it's just that little bit of movement from when I was
adjusting the settings, but everything looks pretty clear and you get a little bit more detail back in the grass and
the planter on the side. So, it still struggles a little bit. Moving on to the
next photos of the motorcycles. Again, the colors look pretty darn solid with
the colors of the bikes not looking too washed out. The blue and purple of the
rear bike and the nice black of this front bike while still keeping a lot of
contrast and detail in the rear trees here. Turning around to the more open
side where the sky has a bit more of a chance of blowing out the photo. Things
still look pretty good. It is a challenging photo with the detail on this tree looking a little mushy, but
the main subjects look quite good. It has good focus. You always get a bit of
a depth of field between the visor on the bike and the tree in the background. Though I think the trees in the back
here look quite bad. It's up to you on your sensitivity, that kind of stuff, though. Some people don't really notice
the artifacting. But when you switch to the 13 megapixel, I feel like a lot of
those problems are solved. You still get the sharpness in the tree with the
details on the bike. You do start to get a little bit of an HDR effect where it
almost seems like there's an unnatural glow on some section of the photo. I
don't think it looks too bad. And this is something I would definitely want to show off to say, "Yeah, I drive a cool
motorcycle." On the front here, we have our 32 megapixel selfie camera. So, this
is actually interesting because it's an RGBW camera. So, compared to the Xen
Phone 9, you get 67% more light and they say 50% less noise. So, your nighttime
photo should look pretty good. But even here in the brightness, we see that
everything looks very clear. You can see all my pores, my beard hairs. Nothing
super unflattering, but also I'm not smooth and looking like a cartoon
character, which is great. These 32 megapixel photos are being binned down
to 8 megapixels, so they're much more easy to share. But as you see, you're
not losing any detail or anything like that. Again, giving a bit more of a challenging photo with the sunlight. You
get a bit of lens flare, but I wouldn't say it's anything that completely ruins the photo, but it's something to be
aware of if you are somebody who takes a lot of photos outside. Up next, we're going to take a look at some video I
took outside to see if there's any wind noise and how the stabilization looks
just on the default mode with no changes. Doing some jiggling, doing some walking
like I just normally would holding the phone. Yeah, it look pretty good even without
any stabilization mode on and just having that OIS. Things look really stable. I am not a super graceful
walker, but you can see things look pretty darn steady. And even when I was shaking the phone, it didn't look super
jelloy or some things you get with EIS. Uh, it looked pretty darn clear and the
mic sounded pretty true to what I sound like. And the wind noise, though
audible, was not completely ruining the video. Let's take a look at this next
video that has stabilization on to see if it made a huge difference. It does punch in a little bit, which is normal
for uh electronic image stabilization where it's zooming in a bit to
compensate for shake, but I am shaking the phone a little bit. I'm kind of
walking a little silly. I don't know if you can tell from the shadow. Uh, and
now walking normally. Seems pretty smooth. Again, pretty
windy. Wow, that is really smooth. It looked like I had it in a gimbal. All
those movements where I was shaking it, couldn't tell at all, though. It is
punching in the frame a bit and you're losing some footage on the outside. It
is definitely worth it if you're somebody who's going to be using this outside when you're hiking or skiing as
long as you're paying attention or just on a bumpy road. Wow, this this looks
really really good. Then I took one more video with the wind noise solution on.
So, it actually has a custom mic setting for wind noise reduction. So, let's see
if that affects how I sound and if it's able to reduce the wind outside.
It's still just a little windy. It's not too bad, but pretty equal to what it was
for the other videos. Uh, does it sound any better? Let's uh find out. Sounded
pretty similar. I'm not super impressed with that result, especially cuz I feel
like my audio sounded a little odd at some points. I don't feel like it was
able to reduce the amount of wind noise when I was speaking or when it was
completely silent and there was just a little bit of wind. Maybe for somewhere where there's like a ton of wind, it
would make a difference. But I'm not completely sold on this. One thing I
forgot to do is take an ultra wide photo. So, let's take one now. Especially with this challenging
lighting, it should give us a good idea on if this is a bit of a sacrifice of
this sensor or if it's just as good as the main one. It looks okay. Like, it is
a 13 megapixel photo, so it's not going to be as high-res as that 50 megapixel
one. I would say the distortion reduction does look pretty strong. Like,
you don't get that weird warping fisheye effect on the outside. Though, you do
get a pretty noisy photo. It doesn't just let that background be dark while
the foreground and main subjects are lit up. It just wants to bring everything up
to the same level, which really makes the background look pretty off color and
dirty. It looks fine, but not as good as your main camera. So, for performance,
looking at these graphs from Labs, the results are interesting when you compare
them to last year's Xen Phone 9. So, even though this has the new Snapdragon
8 Gen 2, when you compare it in app launch testing, the Xen Phone 10
actually performs worse compared to the Xen Phone 9 almost across the board.
Whether the app is launching hot or cold, there seems to be a bit more of a
delay launching on this newer phone. Though in 3D Mark Wildlife Extreme, it
does perform better than the Xen Phone 9 by quite a margin. Then when we look at
gameplay results for Dolphin, Genchin Impact, Call of Duty Mobile, and Unhappy
Raccoon, the results are almost the same for every game. Though the 10 does
outperform the 9 in Genchin Impact by a bit of a margin there. In the battery
longevity test, the ASUS Xen Phone 9 and 10 both perform extremely well with 23
hours. Awesome. In the battery stress test, which is the worst possible
scenario, the Xen Phone 10 outperforms the 9 by about half an hour at 3.3
hours. And compared to the other flagship phones we've tested so far,
performs pretty standard. One disappointing lab results is the screen
brightness. So, in SDR mode, we were only able to get a max of 420 nits.
Nice. When compared to the Xen Phone 9 where it will get 430 nits or really any
other phone that we've tested so far, this is quite a low result. That just
means in regular use, it might not get quite bright enough outside compared to
some of the competition. But when you're just like sitting inside using it, this does feel quite bright. It's hard to say
cuz we're only taking a quick look at it. I can't go and use it for a week and see if it really made a huge difference.
Though, one thing to note is that the HDR peak brightness is 1100 nits, which,
you know, is pretty darn decent. Overall, I've been impressed with how
ASUS have been committed to this Zen phone and this smaller size, and I hope
they keep it up. At €799 and likely $799
as well, this is a pretty complete package. It's not a whole lot cheaper
than some of the other flagships. Like I think the S23 is around €800, $850, but
if you like these smaller phones, you don't seem to be compromising compared
to these other larger phones. And plus, it comes in a bunch of fun colors, which
means you can choose a phone that you actually like the look of. Plus, you
have the connects accessory line. You have the fun photo modes like hyper
clarity and light trails. And you get a headphone jack. I think if you're
somebody who doesn't like folding phones or you're someone who's given up on
Apple ever making a small phone again, this seems to be the go-to choice for
smaller phones. But what do you think? Let us know down below. Is this the phone to convince you to go smaller? Are
you still somebody who wants the Ultra Plus Max?