The ASUS ZenFone 4, ZenFone 5 and ZenFone 6 were recently announced for South East Asia, including Malaysia. One of the most notable features of the ASUS ZenFone smartphones is the PixelMaster Camera Technology. While each of the ASUS ZenFone smartphones are competitively priced below RM1000 (RM299 for the ASUS ZenFone 4, RM599 for the ASUS ZenFone 5 and RM899 for the ASUS ZenFone 6), ASUS spared no expense for the camera components. This includes a 5-element Largan lens, high quality camera sensors from Sony and Panasonic and some really awesome camera filter algorithms.
The ASUS ZenFone smartphones get some really sweet hardware for their cameras
Having had first hand experience with an ASUS ZenFone 5 engineering sample (which was missing these algorithms) we have to admit that we were a bit skeptical about how good the PixelMaster camera tech really is, but we were very impressed by what ASUS has to offer with the complete ASUS ZenFone PixelMaster camera technology. Offering 18 different modes and 9 filters right out of the box, the PixelMaster technology has several notable modes which include:
Low-light mode
Using a form of photo binning, the algorithms compress the pixels available, allowing the ASUS PixelMaster Low-light mode to have 4x light sensitivity. However, this is done by compressing the amount of pixels down by four times, resulting in a lower resolution. Therefore, on the ASUS ZenFone 5 which has an 8MP camera, the Low-light mode results in 2MP image while the ASUS ZenFone 6 which has a 13MP camera gets a 3.25MP image. It is for this reason that the Low-light mode is not available on the ASUS ZenFone 4 as the compression would result in an image with too low a resolution to offer a good enough result.
The Low-light mode lets you take a photo of an image of a butterfly in a sealed box with no light for some impressive low-light performance
Time Rewind
Utilizing a form of video image capture the Time Rewind function records up to 31 frames of high resolution images both before and after the camera button is pressed. In this way you can rewind backwards or forwards to get just the right shot, making it perfect for unpredictable moving objects like children and animals.
ASUS ZenFone 6 Time Rewind for PixelMaster demo
Other camera modes are also available such as the Selfie Mode which focuses on faces, the Smart Remove function which lets you take out unwanted objects, a panorama mode and even a digital image stabilization mode for those with shaky hands. We'll try all of them out for you when we get the ASUS ZenFone smartphone review unit so stay tuned for more developments.
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