I think I was the most excited person for this phone this year, it was supposed to be perfect for me. Because it has an insane battery, no hole punch, flat screen, notification light, 512gb, 3,5mm jack, actual USB3, so many things I want in a phone! This must be perfect for me is what I thought.
I ordered it from Asus's estore site. I also ordered the official €20 screen protector, guess what, I didn't get the screen protector.
If this was the only problem, I would just let it go, buy a screen protector on amazon and be done with it. But it's not.
In my order confirmation was an email address. I sent them a mail on day 1, asking about the screen protector. After a week of hearing nothing, I called them. They told me the email address in the order confirmation is wrong, I need to email a different address (couldn't help me over the phone directly). So I mailed the second address. They replied they're looking into it, then didn't contact me again. I mailed, chatted and called them multiple times in between, every time they said they're still looking into it and I have to wait some more. 1 day before my 2 weeks (return period) was up, I started the return because I don't believe I would ever have gotten the screen protector. When discussing the return, the guy said they don't believe me about the screen protector, and they will not refund me the screen protector (which they never sent me). I stayed calm and planned on waiting until I get the phone refunded before I contact my credit card company for a chargeback, and then share my experience on multiple locations online (which will probably cost them sales). Also while talking the dude on the phone told me he and 1 other guy run the whole estore. For a 18 million people country, they have 2 guys running the estore. Ok! Update: I have gotten my refund, without the money for the screen protector. I'm not done with this yet. This is not acceptable Asus.
Some other annoyances which reinforced me returning it:
-Scheduled battery charging doesn't work, it's suppose to start charging later in the night, it doesn't, it charges right away and keeps it full.
-No perfect alternative to Samsung secure folder, work profile with the app Shelter is not quite the same. I need this daily.
-Fingerprint is slow and bad, doesn't work 50% of the time, combined with:
-Face recognition doesn't work in the dark (previous phone had iris scanner, worked perfectly in the dark).
-Audio bug, when adjusting volume by holding the button, media crashes/freezes regularly.
-Camera can only take jpg pictures, not png. (also no raw)
-Double tap back of the phone gesture works like 20% of the time.
-I liked the idea of the back leds, but some options are missing. I cannot for instance change the incoming call color of the lights, it has to be light green. I can also not change the patters of the lights of notifications, I can only do that on fulltime screen-on/screen off options, makes no sense. As the leds are such a big noticeable feature of this phone, this should have been fully functioning.
-This decided it for me in the end: hitting the shutter button on the 12mp camera takes about half a second, hitting the shutter on the 50mp camera takes about a full second. As a person that likes to take a lot of quick shots, this is awful, I can't deal with this. This is the major decider for me. I'm going back to my old Note9, which has a much faster camera shutter.
-The Asus after sales service is really quite bad, unfriendly, and not acceptable.
-Now don't think there's only negatives, for instance the battery life and the USB transfer speeds are great, but, this is simple not enough for me.
I thought this was gonna be the perfect phone for me, guess I was wrong.
Also Asus if you're reading this (probably not). I hope you realize because you refused to send me a €20 screen protector, you got a €1150 return which was not necessary. Also I'm a person that does a lot of mouth to mouth advertising if I like something, I was already actively posting on 2 subreddits, on the Asus forum, and was close to recommending this phone to family members and friends. In the end, the service and bad camera were the nails in the coffin, which could have cost you multiple phone sales. Maybe it's something to note?
