What are your gripes with the Zenfone 8?

[domnik968]

I want to upgrade to a smaller phone (<6 in) from a Oneplus 6. What are your honest thoughts on the Zenfone 8, as users?

For example, I feel like Oneplus focuses too much on headline specs to get the overall experience. My phone has 8GB ram, but the battery optimisation is highly aggressive. My Tab S7 has 6GB ram, but keeps things in memory much longer. OP6 clears them out after a day or less. I've even missed emails because of it.

The OLED display is too dim. The battery is eh, but it's an old phone. For some reason, I hit power+up, and that puts the phone on vibrate. Why? It has a notification slider. I haven't found anyone else with the issue. And the OP community just moves onto the next phone anyway, forgetting the flaws of the older ones.

So tell me what to expect from the Zenfone 8, or whether I should just go to the safety of Samsung, because I have to sell one phone to buy another, and I always buy 2nd hand.

[nasch007]

It has a too dim screen. Even when fully bright, outside it's barely readable. The audio is very distorted if you enable "outside mode" and it plays at 1 notch over the normal "max". The call audio is clunky -- when I call someone the first ring is very loud in my ear, which is great that's how loud I want it, however the second ring and beyond are noticeably quieter, like the audio levels drop, and I wish the person on the other end could be louder in my earpiece.

Above and beyond all that, my major gripe is the failure of this phone. 

I bought this just over a year ago, and it is no exaggeration the most babied device I've ever owned. I Rhinoshield encased it, always a screen protector, never dropped, never submerged, not a scratch on it -- but it just died. Now I get to see how Asus warranty support is.

I like the phone, its size is overall just a little to big for my hands (I had to put a spigen ring on the back of my case), but a phone is nothing if it doesn't boot up. $700 paperweight.