WEBVTT

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So, there's this hilarious typo in ASUS's PR materials for the Xen Phone 2

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that I think perfectly captures my biggest gripe with this product. I'm

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sorry. Available for purchase when? Yes,

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the most annoying thing about the Zen Phone 2 was the fact that it took so

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very long for ASUS to deliver the $200

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smartphone that they showed off at CES this year. But, is the delay a big deal?

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Has the competitive landscape really changed so much in three months that

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it's significantly less market shaking?

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I guess we'll find out. Strap in, folks.

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Oh, ASUS. I love those guys dearly, but

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they really are a PC company at heart and it really shows through sometimes.

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The Xen Phone 2 actually comes in two flavors. a 16 gig storage version with 2

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gigs of LPDDR3 RAM and an Atom

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Z3560 for $200 and a 64 gig storage

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version with 4 gigs of LPDDR3 RAM and an Atom

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Z3580 for $300. I mean, RAM and storage we've seen

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before, but changing out the CPU, who

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who does that with phones? Anyway, other

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than those core speeds and feeds, both models of the phone are the same.

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Starting at the front, we've got a 5 megapixel selfie camera, a 5.5 in 1080p

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IPS display covered in Gorilla Glass 3, fixed offscreen buttons above a circular

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finished metal chin. Then around the bottom, a micro USB port and microphone.

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On the sides, a whole lot of nothing. At the top, a second mic for noise

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cancellation, a 3 and 12 mm audio jack, and the quite disappointing lock button.

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The position makes it kind of hard to press without really mushing the phone

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into your finger, and the tactile response is marshmallowike, to put it

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kindly. Around the back, we've got a two-tone flash next to the 13 megapixel

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rear camera, volume up and down buttons that can also be used for the camera

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shutter, and a rear-facing speaker that I would describe as functional. But it's

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under the brushed finished plastic backing where things actually start to

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get pretty interesting. Micro SD expansion is one feature that's been

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trending towards extinction in the industry, but ASUS has gone ahead and

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included. And dual micro SIM slots,

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something pretty uncommon here in North America, are also present back here.

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Very nice. Oh, and we can't really show

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this, but if you were to dig in further, you'd find wireless AC and LTE chipsets,

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as well as the sorry, it's not userreplaceable, and it doesn't charge

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wirelessly, but it does support Qualcomm quick charge 3000 milliamp hour battery.

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So, those are some pretty impressive specs, am I right? But what's it like to

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actually hold the thing? Well, the screen isn't the best or brightest IPS

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display I've ever seen, and I'm not a huge fan of the 5 and a half inch form

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factor, but I've got to give it to ASUS.

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It handles pretty well. Their reviewers guide, however one-sided its

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representation of the facts might be, makes a point that I've made multiple

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times about the awkwardness of a flatbacked versus a curved back device.

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And other than that, physically, wow. I guess there's really not much to say.

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It's a ph any phone depending on who it is you ask.

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So, let's talk the make or break of any Android device. The Android 5

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Lollipopbased Zen UI skin. And this is

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going to be a tough one here, folks, because Zen UI does some things very

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right and some things very wrong and some in between. So, let's start with

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the former. Responsiveness is solid, although it should be given that the Xen

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Phone 2's Atom CPU performs similarly to a Snapdragon 801. According to this

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Tom's article, quick settings are customizable and available for pretty

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much any phone setting you could possibly want. And on the subject of

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settings, there is some fan diddlyastic stuff buried in the settings menu.

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Separate user profiles, including a kid mode that allows time limits and locks

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down certain apps. some super smart do not disturb settings like ignoring a

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call from someone the first time then accepting it the second since it's presumably urgent. Automatic phone call

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recording, although you'll want to check on the legality of this in your area

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before activating it. The auto start manager that lets you force apps to wait

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for your permission to launch and do anything in the background. customizable

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gestures like double tap to wake and sleep and double volume tap to wake to

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camera and even the ability to tweak the saturation and color temperature of your

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display or save your screenshots as a PNG instead of a JPEG. I mean, who even

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thinks of that? But for every yin, there

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is a yang. For every up there is a down. And for all the positive things I found

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about Zenui, there were definitely some others that irked me. First up in real

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talk time, ASUS, what is up with the incredible number of pre-installed apps?

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I mean, some of them, like flashlight, I guess we need, but everyone else just

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does this through the quick toggle directly. So, I don't get why it needs to launch an app on the Zen phone, too.

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And some of these things are just inexcusable. What the chuffing hell is

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Zen Circle? Are you a social network company now, ASUS? Why is the fact that

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it comes with trend micro nonsense on it considered a selling point in the

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reviewer's guide? Even Samsung has

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finally figured this out. If a feature is useless to 99% of your users, make it

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an optional download. Don't pack your device full of junk that nobody cares

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about. Which leads to complaint number two, the overall polish. The ASUS

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launcher wasn't configured with notification access by default, causing

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my lock screen to never display my new alerts. The app that lets you use your

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phone on the desktop, actually super handy, very cool, but also kind of

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janky. The phone actually locked up outright twice on me during the time I

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was using it, including a startling full power off while I was writing an email

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with 15% battery showing on the meter. And then when I went to turn it back on,

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it told me the battery was dead. And on the subject of battery life, I've

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confirmed with ASUS that I'm running the latest firmware, but I haven't been able

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to get past 8:00 PM without topping up the battery. Now, in their defense, I am

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a bit of a power user. All the radios on all the time is my policy. I got like

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smartwatches and stuff, but with a 3,000

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milliamp hour battery capacity, I should be easily making it through the day. So,

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I suspect software, whether it's one of my usual apps that disagrees with Zenui

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or some of the stupid bloat that ASUS preloaded, I think there's something

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stealthily draining battery in the background. But unfortunately, my usual

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battery meter apps are not picking up on it. So, I'll try and post in the video

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description when and if I figure out what it is. Which leads to the other

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make or break smartphone feature these days, the camera. I'm torn on this one,

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too. On the one hand, the manual mode is great for camera geeks and using the

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super resolution like multi-exposure merging mode and the low light four

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pixels acting as one for higher sensitivity modes result in some

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shockingly good photos, albeit with a higher processing time cost and or a

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lower resolution cost in both ideally lit and poorly lit situations. On the

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other hand, while the Toshiba sensor behind the f2.0 lens might be okay. It's

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not very featurerich with a max video resolution of 1080p and no slow-mo

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support whatsoever. It lacks optical image stabilization. The camera launches

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quite slowly. And the auto photo mode, the one most people will usually use, is

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just not very good with smeary noise

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reduction processing artifacts eliminating a lot of the detail from

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even photos that are taken under pretty good conditions.

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But this is a $200 smartphone off contract for the

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base model. And even for the $300 one,

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you get more than a token increase in storage with CPU and RAM upgrades being

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thrown in along with a quadrupling of your storage. Not to mention that ASUS

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has committed to allowing bootloadader unlocking. And the thing even includes a

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quick charger, something HTC couldn't be bothered to do on a smartphone that

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costs over twice as much. So, here's the

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conclusion. While it's not perfect at

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the price, the bottom line is ASUS,

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you're going to have a lot of to clean up when the Xen Phone 2 is done kicking

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all the ass it's going to kick out there in the market. And you can quote that on

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out. So I think that pretty much wraps it up, guys. Like this video if you

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liked it, dislike it if you thought it sucked, leave a comment if your feelings are more complicated than this,

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preferably on our forum, which is linked in the video description. Also linked in the video description, a place to buy a

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cool t-shirt like this one, a place to give us a monthly contribution, and a place to change your Amazon bookmarked,

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