Asus - ZenFone Live with 16GB Memory Cell Phone, 5.5" IPS Touch Screen (Unlocked) - Midnight Black

UPDATE 13.02.2021. This phone has one of the worst cellphone tower receptions. Very spotty.The battery has improved by about 10% by deactivating Chrome Browser. Just replace Chrome Browser with any other secure data browsers like Vivaldi. Dont use Opera since they are owned by chinese. Vivaldi does not suck your battery at all - since its not attempting to send constantly your data. Chrome Browser uses your battery most likely because it constantly sends data. Erasing Chrome saves you at least 10% of battery.UPDATE 25.10.2020. I realised the glass has on the front 2 scratches. I cant imagine how I managed to get them. The fone is allways in a leather holster and never has gotten scratched. I can just imagine the glass is not real glass or some sort of cheaped off non hardened glass. At least expect it to scratch fairly easy for no reason. Asus Customer Service does not care at all. Sound volumen problem still stays the same although I dont know why that happens. OS update I have never gotten so most likely Asus will never make availlable one update I guess. The battery works one charge fine then the other charge is loosing charge way quicker. I dont believe this is a problem of local Cell phone towers. The cell reception is mostly spotty at best. I have seen the battery going down 7% on standby over night (all antennas switched off except cell fone tower). The newest nasty surprise is the front glass is easy to scratch. Did they secretly switch over to some hardlex plastic based glass? The phone never ever has come near to some sharp objects and it is fully encovered in an leather case on my belt.UPDATE 22.09.2020. Sound (volumen) has problems staying at personally set settings. The volumen somehow for calling, speaker and media is ALLWAYS at maximum setting. Receiving a call I have to manually reduce the sound since it sets itself allways to maximum. Thats the case for media as well and external speaker, as well for the speaker of the phone. I dont know why that is. That must be an software issue. Asus doesnt respond to my inquiries about that. The phone is updated whatever update Asus pushed. I honestly had hopes Asus would upgrade the phone to Android 10 but till now nothing whatsoever. I would not be surprised if Asus would have left its good upgrade policy and now they are on par with other shoddy manufacturers who never upgrade their expensive phones.I ordered an spare battery for this from eBay and the battery lasts to about 2 to 4.5 days having the phone mostly on standby - that rises my satisfaction level to 75%. As well you can not edit your existing Contacts on your contact list with the Asus software. Annoying. The most annoying thing is the maxed out sound issue since you really have to adjust before every call the volumen. That would turn off lots of customers.Face ID does not recognize the face when it's a little darker - with less light. It recognizes the face about 70% of the time but then often just after a few seconds. So I use mainly the "drawing" security since the face ID is somewhat pointless and unpractical on this device - doesnt work for practical purposes.Since the battery life is my primary goal being this device an emergency item, I am fairly satisfied with this model - at least up to 75%.However because of the sound volume problem, I dont recommend this phone. Opening Apps takes allways a few seconds and it's noticeably slow.I hope the spare battery is an genuine product and doesnt loose its power after a couple of charges - you never know with spare batteries since most of them are counterfeit products and rip offs.UPDATE 18.09.2020. Asus warranty is non existant. About an defective battery of this device and model they replied me this:"We have received a follow up in regards to the invoice which was escalated. Regrettably, Ebay is not an official retailer of ASUS and as such the invoice submitted is not valid. I would suggest getting in contact with your reseller and have them provide you with a valid invoice to have the warranty verifified.Regrettably, we do not offer replacements and can only recommend having the device sent in for repair. Our system reflects that the warranty of your device had ended on 2020/05/01. To proceed with repair an $85 diagnostic fee must be paid prior to the device being sent for repair. This fee does not include the repair cost, however, covers 2-way shipping and handling of your device. When your product reaches the repair facility and is examined by a technician, you will be contacted via email with a quote for the actual cost of repair. Once you receive that quotation, you may use the options located directly on the quotation to proceed with payment, ask further questions, or reject the quotation."Basically, if your Asus, any Asus fone, is a lemon, you are on your own. They even do not repair the product for free and consider the warranty expiration date most likely from first announcement date of that particular fone model - not even your purchase invoice. Thats why it gets 2.5 stars making it barely upt to 3 stars. They should have sent me an replacement since they battery is built in and thus the whole fone has to be replaced since the battery can not be changed. What for an dissappointment. Luckily I ordered from eBay an spare battery and will replace the battery by myself. The battery is improving a bit by now so it may be fixing itself somehow. However the customer care of Asus is not acceptable since there is no warranty whatsoever honoured and they charge you steep pricing for repairs. I wouldnt say stay away from Asus but if the fone has a problem they will push you around and bring forth lots of excuses in order to avoid warranty claims like Amazon and eBay Invoices are not accepted and such stuff. I even sent them a screenshot of my fones model, box and such but they came up suddenly with the excuse screenshots were not valid. I cant see this company getting lots of market share with such an shitty customer service and blatant rip off scheeme.First time I heard the Invoice and Orders of Amazon and eBay are not accepted as proof of purchase.Sad to hear this about Asus but nonetheless the truth - I had lots of hopes with this brand and wanted already to stay permanently with the Asus brand.I even offered them to buy from them directly another fone for 70$ (2 for 70$) but they never even replyed to that and not even offered to sell me an spare battery as I suggested them as well. On eBay and Amazon one never are sure about the genuinity of the batteries or if they are freshly made since in my experience most spare batteries are counterfeit products which loose quickly the charge. So I told them I wanna buy a spare battery from them but then they insulted me with this horrendous "repair" offer. They should have sent me at least an spare battery for free or offer me to send me a new fone but none of these options came to their minds.Be aware with Asus products: they have no real warranty.MAIN REVIEW: I bought this on eBay since my very bad experience on amazon with smartphones. Last time I got an defective Samsung J3 which on all 3 batteries drains them like crazy. No refund was issued neighter by amazon nor the seller.This very fone costs on amazon 102 $ while on eBay 70 $ - thats for an whooping 50% of price difference. Amazon has gotten considerably pricey on many products compared to eBay. 102 $ for this device is clearly overpriced since 70 $ would be already on the higher side.Problem: my fone (same model as here) came with an 8 MP camera but was as well advertised as an 13 MP camera, thats why I bought it. I realised the nasty surprise of only an 8 MP camera when I entered the settings of the camera and saw it only went till 8 MP. Sure enough on the box it stated as well 8 MP as for the main camera. On Asus webpage and reviews on other websites it allway is stated as having an 13 MP camera - which is the main selling point of the "Live" designation. Expect your phone arriving as well with an 8 MP camera instead of an 13 MP main camera. The camera is not very good and gets easy blurry pictures.Is this a counterfeit product or is it an last production charge and they ran out of 13 MP cameras and put there in some other leftovers? More questions than answers...I got at least soon after setting it up an OS update although it still sits at its original Android 8.1 (Oreo) operating system.The battery is nothing to write home eighter since mine dropped 2% after 30 minutes - so I suspect a faulty battery. On idle it dropped however only 1% over night (I have allways Wifi, etc on off and power savings mode on).For my unit mnufacture date seems to be April 2019 which is not to bad for an 2018 announced device. Could be it is the last batch and they ran out of 13 MP cameras and put in some leftover 8 MP cameras.A big plus is the OS of this fone is allmost stock Android. No bloatware whatsoever. I would say Asus has even put in to few software since an battery optimization App is missing which I allways liked very much on Samsung.But less Apps and Bloatware less battery drainers, I guess.Actually this Asus Zenfone Live L1 ZA550KL performs way better regards battery power than my Samsung J3 ever did (which drained the last 50% of the battery within 3 hours of standby).This model is not made "for an carrier" and got unlocked afterwards so maybe thats why this performs way better than the "made for AT&T" Samsung it replaces. It can do just 1 thing at once but thats fine since I anyways use the fone only for calling, sms, checking 3 times a day WhatsApp and the occasional internet surfing or even more occasional Youtube listening. A fone after all is: for foning and basic communication. Wanna play games? Use your tablet or PC.It has not fingerprint but I found the face recognition feature which works very well and quick. It has not physical buttons but via double tap the screen is woken up and shut off as well, which is similar as with the Microsoft Lumia fones I had. That is a good practical feature - even better than waking the screen up via button press. Sound quality is good enough but by background call recorder sounds distortet (but it's probably not Asus fault). Having glasses on prevents the face recognition to recognize your face.This model has 2 speakers on the bottom which are very good - way better than the speaker of other brands. At 50% one can listen and hear any Youtube video with comfort in an non noisy background. Those 2 speakers are a positive surprise.As well this model seems not to have built in the advertised processor but it is an quad core 1.4 Ghz processor of some sort as stated on the box (differently than advertised by the sellers on amazon or eBay). Opening apps is slow and Youtube first crashed 2 times on me probably because of the 1 GB Ram. But it works.Screen brightness is very good and it has even an HD+ screen as advertised on the box. I has the feature to adjust automatically illumination of the screen. Otherwise Wifi and Bluetooth and the rest work fine.Be aware that it has not a strong cellfone tower receptor so within housing you could have no cellfone reception. I have put the settings on 3G/2G automatic select. But it makes no difference - the cellfone reception is spotty and on par as it was with my Samsung J2 Prime (Android 6.0) which had an excellent battery performance while the Samsung J3 (2018) had the worse battery performance ever, but had allways cellfone reception. Seems to be a trade off. But what serves a fone if the battery is dead constantly?! I would take all day the long lasting battery device.For 70$ I recommend if the battery holds up (the best battery till date I had with these Microsoft Lumias - which were excellent quality batteries). Be aware to get eventually a fone with different specs as advertised.This model is an option I recommend but its getting dated already so other better spec fones for same pricing may be an better choice. But you can not go wrong with this for very basic communication only and emergency.I recommend.After all a fone is for calling, isnt it?!

horrible phone. Not worth the money.Drops the internet when on WiFiSpeakers are the worst, can hear anythingNeed I go on?

This Best phone