We recently published a camera comparison of the two of the best selfie shooters in Android, the Cherry Mobile Selfie versus the Asus Zenfone Selfie. The former is a locally branded smartphone for selfie-addicts and casual shooters, it is already available to buy for Php 7,995 price PH, which is a few thousands cheaper than the budget selfie phone, the Asus Zenfone Selfie, priced at Php 11,995.
- Zenfone Selfie vs Xperia C5 Ultra
- Flare Selfie, Omega Nitro Official Specs
- Lenovo Vibe Shot vs Zenfone 2
Let’s find out which between these camera phones is better not only in selfie shooting, but as an overall budget too.
Table of Contents
Advantages/Pros Asus Zenfone Selfie vs Flare Selfie
- Larger display, 5.5-inch vs 5-inch
- Sharper screen, 1080p Full HD vs 720p
- Gorilla Glass 3
- Removable back cover, replaceable battery
- Dual-LED flash on front-facing selfie camera
Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie Pros vs Zenfone Selfie
- Cheaper, Php8k vs Php12k pesos price in PH
- Metal frame
- Fingerprint scanner
- Faster chip, CPU
- More megapixels in front and main cameras
Design and build quality
The Flare Selfie is one of the locally branded phones with an attractive and premium-looking design. It has glossy plastic black and rounded metal frame. The fingerprint scanner on the Flare Selfie is mediocre and not so useful, in my case. It detects my fingers like 3 out of 10 most of the time.
On the other hand, the Zenfone Selfie comes with a removable back cover and replaceable battery, which is a rare sighting in most phones today. The Pink variant is sassy and as sexy as the white Cherry Flare Selfie.
Flare Selfie is smaller and easier to hold than Zenfone Selfie. It’s lighter and thinner. What we liked in Zenfone Selfie is the rear buttons and curved back.
Winner: Tie. The Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie has sexy, premium design while the Zenfone Selfie offers more flexibility, thanks to the replaceable battery.
Display and viewing experience
The Zenfone Selfie offers wider sharper display. It measures 5.5-inches with Gorilla Glass 3. In terms of color, it has more neutral output, tho, brightness on Flare Selfie is outstanding. Display of Flare Selfie is quite reddish similar to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 that we reviewed and compared.
Winner: Asus Zenfone Selfie. Despite the brighter screen of the Flare Selfie, the accurate colors and more pleasing display output of the Zenfone Selfie give an edge in viewing experience.
Camera in selfie, video, and low light
The images we took from the Asus Zenfone Selfie’ 13MP PixelMaster camera showed more contrast and saturation. The overall color reproduction is stunning and very close to natural, real-life images.
In terms of details (still image and HD video mode), it’s quite a close call for the two. There are times that the Zenfone Selfie’ shots are sharper and possess clearer and crisper details than on the Cherry Mobile Selfie.
What we like on the camera of the Flare Selfie is the bright output. Dynamic Range is quite good too considering it’s a budget Android phone under Php 8,000 pesos.
Now on the front-facing selfie comparison, we see a very close match too. However, we felt the Zenfone Selfie is the winner on the selfie shooting it is because it has a wider angle or focal view.
It’s dual tone LED flash mode at night also works naturally and brighter than the single LED flash of the Flare Selfie.
Overall, the Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie is not a bad camera. In fact, we still recommend the Flare Selfie for those in tight budget and cannot go for more than Php 10k budget. But again, the winner of this match is the Zenfone Selfie.
Winner: Asus Zenfone Selfie. The Zenfone Selfie takes the cake in the camera department because of the color reproduction and night or low light shooting capabilities.
Performance and Benchmarks
Surprisingly, the Flare Selfie with Mediatek 6753 chip performs slightly faster than the Asus Zenfone Selfie with Snapdragon 615 in actual speed test and syntethic benchmarks. Both have 3GB RAM and expandable 16GB storage.
Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie benchmark ratings
- AnTuTu: 36786
- Basemark: 555
- Geekbench: 633 single core / 2856 multi-core
Asus Zenfone Selfie benchmark ratings
- AnTuTu: 32350
- Basemark: 864
- Geekbench: 658 single core / 2396 multi-core
Winner: Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie fared well and soared higher in actual speed test and benchmark tests.
Battery life
The Zenfone Selfie with replaceable 3000mAh battery lasted longer in our battery test than the Flare Selfie with the same 3000mAh capacity. Both phones can last in a whole day with moderate use.
Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie battery life and charging time
- Video playback: 10h
- Moderate use: 1 day (browsing, video, SMS/text, voice calls, casual games)
- On-screen time: 3-4 hours
- Charging speed: 2h
Asus Zenfone Selfie battery life and charging time
- Video playback: 12h 30min
- Moderate use: 1 day
- On-screen time: 3-4 hours
- Charging speed: 2h
Winner: Tie
Speaker test
The speaker of the Flare Selfie is positioned on the bottom side. It doesn’t get blocked easily compared to the rear-facing single mono speaker of the Asus Zenfone Selfie. But the Taiwanese giant is aware of the con of the positioning of the speaker so that’s why they made a curved back up to the speaker grill.
In audio quality and sound power, the Zenfone Selfie produced louder and clearer output. The vocals is higher and the overall sound is cooler.
Winner: Asus Zenfone Selfie
Price and Verdict
The Zenfone Selfie retails at P11,995 pesos or around $280 USD. The Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie is cheaper with P7,995 or $170USD official price tag here in the Philippines.
Now on the question, which phone takes better selfie photos and is an overall better budget phone? For camera alone, we think the Zenfone Selfie takes better photos. But overall we felt that the two phones are great budget phones and worth for your money, whichever phone you will choose.
Selfie Winner: Asus Zenfone Selfie
Overall Winner: Tie for the budget pricing and value you will be getting from each shooter.
Watch the video comparison down below.
Specs and price comparison of Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie vs Asus Zenfone Selfie
| SPECS, PH Price | Cherry Mobile Flare Selfie | Asus Zenfone Selfie |
| Display | 5-inch 720p Full HD IPS, 298ppi | 5.5-inch 1080p Full HD AMOLED, 401 ppi |
| Size | 8.7mm thick, 164g weight | 10.8mm thin, 170g weight |
| Design | Metal + plastic | Gorilla Glass 4, removable plastic back, patterned design |
| Colors | White with gold | Pink, White, Blue |
| Chipset & CPU | MediaTek 6753 octa-core 64bit, 1.5GHz | Snapdragon 615 octa 64bit, 4×1.7GHz, 4×1.5GHz |
| Graphics | Mali-T720 GPU | Adreno 405 GPU |
| Memory | 3GB RAM, 16GB internal, microSD up to 32GB | 3GB RAM, 16GB internal, microSD up to 64GB |
| Camera | 16MP, AF, dual tone LED flash, 1080p video | 13MP, AF, 1080p video, dual tone LED flash |
| Selfie | 16MP selfie front-facing | 13MP selfie front-facing |
| Connectivity | Dual micro SIM, WiFi ac, 4G LTE, Bt 4.1, GPS | Dual nano SIM, WiFi ac, 4G LTE, Bt 4.1, GPS |
| Software | Android 5.1 Lollipop | Android 5.0 Lollipop, ZenUI, up to Marshmallow |
| Battery | 3000mAh | 3000mAh |
| Ports, quick charge | microUSB, quick charging | microUSB, fast charging |
| Release date | December 2015, available in Philippines | October 2015, available online Lazada or Asus PH store |
| Price | Phh 7,995 Official Price PH | P11,995 Official Price PH |
