Asus Zenfone 5Z is one of the mid-range smartphones who started the trend of bringing the flagship grade chipset at a more affordable price. The Zenfone 5Z was released with Android 8 Oreo, and in early 2019, the company released the Android 9 Pie update. When we updated our Zenfone 5Z to the Android 9 Pie, something strange happened.
The performance of this Zenfone 5Z has risen to a level where it can easily beat the likes of OnePlus 6T and even its own big brother Asus ROG Phone. Let’s investigate what is going on here and how it got that better with just an Android version update.
When its Started?
I have been using this smartphone for quite a long time now and I was eagerly waiting for the Android 9 Pie update. Last week, I found out that the update had been released in some countries and I could install it on my phone. After installing it on my Zenfone 5Z, I felt a performance bump.
At first, I thought it was just an average performance bump, kind of when you get after an Android version update. Then I decided to see how much performance bumped since the last Android version. So I installed the Antutu Benchmark app and ran it. Being a smartphone tester and reviewer, I immediately saw the performance bump when the benchmark started, and the results were even shocking.
My Asus Zenfone 5Z got a total Antutu score of 297662 which a little high for a smartphone with SD 845 and 6GB of RAM. By comparing this smartphone to Poco F1 which comes with similar specifications but with 8 GB RAM. The Poco F1 yields AnTuTu score of 266453 which is identical to what Zenfone 5Z got on Android 8.1 Oreo.
What Happened?
This is still not known what happened during the update but looking deeper, we noticed a change. The filesystem of internal storage has been changed to tmpfs from ext4 which is found usually on Android smartphones. The tmpfs file system was also used in the Nubia’s Red Magic gaming smartphone to achieve faster storage.
So, this could be one of the reasons which increased the performance to such an extent. There is nothing more we can think of which can improve the performance of this smartphone.
Wrapping up
Asus Zenfone 5Z is an excellent smartphone if you are looking for a high-performance smartphone and decent camera. You can read our in-depth review of Asus Zenfone 5Z and side by side comparison with OnePlus 6. We will keep you updated with the Zenfone 5Z performance bump as soon as we get something from the brand itself.