ASUS ZenFone Max Plus ZB570TL-MT67-3G32G-BK - 5.7” 1920x1080-3GB RAM - 32GB Storage - LTE Unlocked Dual SIM Cell Phone - US Warranty - Black

Excellent phone. Sleek, powerful, fast. Great battery life. Could not be more impressed. Update: After the first bit of use I have found that the phone still performs wonderfully and flawlessy, apps run smoothly and videos play without a hitch. I am most impressed by the battery life. Older phones I used you had to charge twice a day or more with regular usage. The Zenfone Max Plus lasts me two days on a full charge with regular usage. Quite impressive for the price. The only issue I have noted is the lack of wifi calling and the occasional delay of incoming SMS or the inability to download MMS. This is not the phones fault as I had the exact same issue with my previous phones. It is due to sub par T-Mobile service in my area. Otherwise the phone is great.

I am an avid phone owner and always looking for an extra phone for games, music, etc. This phone is easily a perfect fit for someone who wants a cheaper smart phone that still has good performance. I haven't had any problems with playing games, streaming movies or music, or taking photos. The camera isn't the most high tech and won't give you razor sharp photos, but still functions and will give you better photos then any non smartphone that I know of. The only issue I have encountered is that there will often be a slow down on your WiFi connectivity while you are using Bluetooth on the phone which can be a bit of a downer for wireless headphone users, but even then for the price you pay it is a very good product

Unboxing this phone.. I was in love. It's sleek and light but feels solidly built. Setting it up was a breeze and before I knew it I was on my way to installing 3 different system updates. Unfortunately after the 3rd update installed and I was able to start USING the phone I was plagued with system UI crashes, prompting me to either wait for the UI to work properly or close it now.. At first it seemed to happen every 5-8 minutes.. then it was multiple times in a row within that 5 minute window making the phone completely unusable. I spoke with support and tried resetting everything back to factory. I was curious whether it was due to the 3 separate system updates I had to install initially so I chose not to install those.. but sure enough, after 24 hours powered on I was back to the endless UI crashes so I returned it per supports suggestion. In the return process Amazon had sending a replacement as an option and I took them up on that because I wanted to be able to LOVE this phone. Alas.. I booted up the replacement phone and encountered the exact same UI crashes. After some searching online I see that this is not an unknown issue with the phone so I returned the replacement as well and am off to find a better alternative.

I really like the phone but I had to take off one star because it lacks Wi-Fi calling. Find this odd because with all the features this mid range phone comes with you would think it would come with Wi-Fi calling. Where I live the signal strength is spotty so having Wi-Fi calling would be a nice feature. I did reach out to Asus in regards to Wi-Fi calling and they did finally admit that it does NOT have Wi-Fi calling after they first told me that it did. I want to touch on the subject of performance. Keep in mind this is a mid level phone and not a flagship so I wanted to compare it to my Note 4 since it was old technology, having come out in 2014, so decided to do a bench mark test using an android app Geek Bench 4. Here are the scores: Max Plus: Single core score was 442 Multi-Core Score was 962 Note 4: Single core score was 1065 Multi-core score was 2879 As you can see there is a quite a difference in performance between the two phones even though the Note 4 is older technology but was a flagship phone when it came out (although I did not buy it when it first came out). Having posted the scores I have not had any issues with performance; but I do not play any high graphically based games on my phone only card games or something like a bubble shooter. Playing music or videos has not been a problem and is plenty loud just using the built in speaker. It is important to mention that the phone only supports wifi 2.4 ghz connections and not 5 ghz. Oh and as far as it being "fragile" I have not experienced any issues but of course I have not dropped it either. But since the phone lacks gorilla glass, or even if it did, I would recommend a glass screen protector and a case (but I always do that for every phone I buy). The phone seems to be built well and have not had any problems with Bluetooth and hooking it up to the computer to transfer files although you may have to enable usb debugging in order to transfer files when using a usb cable. Which by the way is micro USB not USB c which is becoming more common in cell phones. The camera also has a fair amount of features (grids and such) although it does seems a little slow if you are using the flash but other wise is responsive and takes pictures quickly. One of the best things is the battery life which is higher than most phones especially in this price range. Conclusion: If you are wanting a mid level phone that has a lot of features and will not break the bank compare to a lot of the flag ship phones out there I would recommend it so as long as you do not need Wi-Fi calling. Even though it is slower than the Note 4 I was using, it was not an issue for me, and this phone would be perfect if I lived in an area with better signal strength and or it had Wi-Fi calling.

I was loving it, until it started to give me problems ~3 weeks in. First time I seriously used the camera for a little bit the phone crashed, and was left trying to restart fro 20 minutes... then it came back up. The first time I used the Gps for a longer trip the screen went off. I thought the phone shut down, but after a couple of minutes it gave me some directions "in a quarter mile, turn right". The screen was completely black- leaving me stranded until around 30 minutes or so, when it came back up. Sooooo pros: - Great camera, except in low-light. But it's not a flagship phone, so I'll give it a break. - Feels great in the hand. The form factor was a bit weird at first, as advertised, but I liked it. - Best phone battery I have ever tried. - Pretty slick cons: - Unreliable / dubious quality. My friends with flagship phones were probably envious of the price, until it crashed and was non responsive for the longest time. Then all I got from them was "you get what you pay for" This is the second ASUS product I have to return, the previous one had hardware malfunctions 1 week in. I never try to troubleshoot products if they malfunction badly in the first weeks (I learned from previous experiences)- so I didn't contact support. Maybe it was bad luck. I'm giving this 3 starts, possibly on a coin flip.

For budget unlocked phones, here are some of the names to consider in the US: ASUS, ZTE, Alactel, Huawei/Honor, etc. They all work seamlessly with ATT and Tmo on 4G LTE bands. Now with ZTE in trouble on the trade war with China, ASUS is a great replacement. Also this one can have dual sim and exclusive Micro-SD work together. Asus is probably the only manufacturer is doing dual-sim with exclusive micro-SD slot in the sim-tray. Another phone with such capability is Honor 5X. This model however, is 2-3 years old. So far I have no problem in call quality, bluetooth, and wifi connection. The phone is also light in weight, compared to the ZTE Blade 8 Pro. Fingerprint scanner is fast enough, though it's in the back. It's not a USB-type C, but the charging speed is fast enough. So far I like it and hopefully to keep it in the next year or two.

Edit 3/04/2018 I have added a screenshot from engineering mode showing what bands this phone uses. These screenshots are from the phone shipped and sold by Amazon. This is a great phone, especially for the price! I saw a review that said the reviewer didn't receive a model made for the U.S. The one I received is infact the correct model for the U.S. and was shipped and sold by Amazon the day after the release. I can only assume the other reviewer ordered his from a 3rd party seller prior to the actual U.S. release. If you are looking for a nice phone that is inexpensive but doesn't look or feel it, you can't go wrong with this one.

Keep in mind i really wanted this phone to work... Where should i start about this? While this phone is really stylish and has some really strong features, like it's camera, it's missed a lot of my calls and sent a lot of my calls to voicemail (and it's set NOT to) and i run a business and can't afford to miss some calls because let's face it, some customers just are NOT that patient. lol This whole "smaller is better" thing (in the GUI layout) doesn't appeal to me. The older, classic Android bottom of the screen, larger icons, layout was something i enjoyed and didn't realize this phone doesn't like that idea until i got it. The phone actually looks bigger, on every review i've seen, than it does when you get it. The phone is SUPER speedy...until you start putting a decent number of apps on it then stars slowing down. My Galaxy Note 5 did NOT do that. The whole "euro" way of doing things, on this phone, bugged me like them using the word "Telephony" and it was set for US english. This feels like an international phone that was sold as not being that. Pulling the menu down, with this phone, seems to be an "extra" effort (at times) and immediately got me irritated. The fact that it only updates to 7.x (for the power it's supposed to have) i thought was pointless. It should have been able to go to Oreo (Android 8.0) with ease. The USB "micro" connector...c'mon people, that's old (and easy to break off) technology....let it DIE. USB-C is what's happening. This phone just feels like they started out strong designing it and got lazy about mid-way through and just wrapped it up and sold it. Amended Information: Just before i sent this phone back, it constantly lost connection with calls and refused to connect with my Bluetooth. This phone, with all it's power and features, has to be the worst phone (of it's kind) i have ever experienced. 24 hours before i sent it back: The battery stopped wanting to charge. It's almost like this phone "knows" i'm send it back...this is weird.