Asus Zenfone 2 (Leandro)

“Asus has always been my brand,” said, Leandro, a twenty-year-old IT Tech living in Trinidad.  “I just have a certain brand loyalty and will always recommend them to family or friends.”

However, Leandro wanted to make it clear to me that he is by no means a fanboy.

“If they make a cruddy device, I won’t buy it just because of the brand.”

So why did Leandro ultimately buy his Asus Zenfone 2 (2GB)?

Value.

“It was all about value,” said, Leandro, through his microphone on Skype.  “You just can’t get such a good phone for $200 (US dollars).”

His one-month-old Asus Zenfone 2 comes equipped with a lot of features that are important for Leandro.  The most notable features are that it can make use of an SD card, is a dual SIM phone, and that it is up-to-date with Google’s Android Lollipop 5.0.

The Trinidadian with a business administration degree considers himself a mainstream user, meaning that he wants a phone that will do the typical smartphone tasks.  Leandro’s most used apps are your typical social media ones: imgur for Reddit, kik, and WhatsApp.

He also uses Media Monkey to listen to his music almost everyday at work while being connected to WiFi.

With this common pattern of use, Leandro’s Asus Zenfone 2 is able to last a full two days on a single charge.  Speaking of charging, he also bought the 18 watt quick charger for his Zenfone 2.

After about fifteen minutes of conversing, Leandro, was posed with what most consider a tough question.  Why shouldn’t I buy this phone? (every positive has a negative)

Although asked to provide only one negative, he instead gave me two because he thought the first was a bit…petty.

Leandro doesn’t think the lock button is placed in an ergonomic location.  He thinks that it should be on the side of the phone instead of on top because it can be turned off from either singular hand.

Another quip Leandro has with his Zenfone 2 is that it comes with too much bloatware.

“I went on XDA [.com] to figure out how to root it and see what unnecessary apps could be uninstalled,” said Leandro.  “Ones such as Zencircle, Zentalk, etc.  I’ve never used them before.”

What he has used before, though, is a Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini as his previous device.  This phone he reiterated did not have value.

When asked for any final thoughts, Leandro said, “I would definitely recommend this [Asus Zenfone 2] over any other ‘budget’ phone and that I don’t see the extra $100 upgraded version as worth it, due to how cheap SD cards are.”

In case you were wondering what XDA Developers link that Leandro was talking about, here it is: http://forum.xda-developers.com/zenfone2/help/bloatware-to-removed-root-t3123108