I have had always mixed feelings about Zenfones. On one hand I was one of those people complaining about the lack of small-factor Android phones. On the other hand I'm one of those people who never bought a Zenfone. I could just never justify their price.
Currently one can get a huge chinese flab for $250, with decent HW specs that will be still decent in 3 years (and also horrible SW support). Why can't anyone create such a phone, but small? Maybe from a brand that has at least some breadcrumbs of reputation?
Sony seems to do the same. They have a couple of small Xperias, but they cost more than a top of the line iPhone... I guess they will exit in a year or two also. Not that I'm happy about it. Just not sure who these manufacturers are targeting.
While never having used the Zenfone 9 or 10, my experience with the Zenfone 8 was not so good.
It did feature a fast CPU and enough RAM and is still a fast phone, but:
- it heated up significatntly from day 1
- even with the battery saver mode on and a durable power profile enabled, the battery barely lasted me a full day of use
- the phone was chunky when compared to my previous Huawei P10, and only had one third-party case available on launch day
- software updates were regular for the first few months after release, but every second one seemed to introduce a different problem with a major feature (NFC payments, notifications, face unlock, battery life...)
- problems introduced in a previous update were only fixed in a month with the next update, so you were left with a buggy phone if you updated regularily
- a few months after release, phones from the first two or three batches started randomly dying without any chance of recovery. ASUS never reacted to this, except "contact your local service center". Because of this problem, I got used to carrying a backup phone with me each time I was away from home for more than a day
- around when ZF9 came out, the official support forum felt abandoned by ASUS, and software updates became even more irregular, even though issues are still present
To sum it up, I feel that ASUS has great (phone) hardware, but just don't care about the users. I moved to a Samsung S23 as it is smaller than the ZF8 and is more popular, so I figured that they can't mess up support for so many people.
Currently one can get a huge chinese flab for $250, with decent HW specs that will be still decent in 3 years (and also horrible SW support). Why can't anyone create such a phone, but small? Maybe from a brand that has at least some breadcrumbs of reputation?
Sony seems to do the same. They have a couple of small Xperias, but they cost more than a top of the line iPhone... I guess they will exit in a year or two also. Not that I'm happy about it. Just not sure who these manufacturers are targeting.