The most surprising new smartphone of 2019 only costs $500 — here are the 9 features that make the Zenfone 6 so cool

The Asus Zenfone 6. YouTube/MKBHD The new Asus Zenfone 6 one of the best Android phones you can buy, with a gorgeous screen, innovative features, and an attractive starting price of $500.

We break down the best features that make the Zenfone 6 such a compelling option for prospective smartphone buyers.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories. The Asus Zenfone 6 is one of the best surprises of 2019 so far. It's one of the most attractive smartphones out this year, with a true "all-screen" design - unlike so many smartphones with notches and hole punches in them to make room for a selfie camera. In the Zenfone 6, the selfie camera is actually the rear camera: there's actually a mechanism that flips the rear camera to the front whenever you want a selfie. It's pretty cool! The Zenfone 6 is unlike any other smartphone we've seen this year, so we compiled its best features to help make sense of why it's such a compelling package.

1. The price: The Asus Zenfone 6 starts at just $500 — half the price of other premium smartphones. YouTube/MKBHD The iPhone XS starts at $1,000. The Galaxy S10 starts at $900, and the S10 Plus starts at $1,000. This phone is half the price of those phones - and it still looks great, and works exceedingly well. The starting price gets you 64 GB of storage, but you can get up to 256 GB.

2. The Zenfone 6 is truly an "all-screen" phone. Its 6.4-inch 1080p LCD panel actually stretches from edge to edge — with no notch or hole punch for the selfie camera. It's totally seamless. YouTube/MKBHD

3. The Zenfone 6 doesn't have a traditional selfie camera. Instead, whenever you want to take a selfie, the rear camera flips around to face you. This is how Asus was able to deliver an all-screen phone. YouTube/MKBHD

4. The camera itself is really neat: You can actually control the placement of the motorized camera to capture any angle, up to a full 180 degrees. YouTube/Dave Lee The phone's volume rocker can act as a controller for how much you want the camera to flip up, and the phone's Camera app also presents a slider that allows you to swipe up or down to control the placement of the camera.

5. Thanks to the unique camera system, the Zenfone 6 can take automatic panoramas. Just press a button, and the phone will take the perfect panorama by slowly moving the camera a full 180 degrees. There's no need to move your hand, or yourself, at all. YouTube/MKBHD

6. The unique camera design isn't just good for photos; in video mode, it can also automatically to track your subjects. Just tap your subject on the screen, and the motorized camera can follow it. YouTube/MKBHD

7. The Zenfone 6 has a cool defense mechanism to handle drops: Once the phone senses it's falling, it quickly retracts the camera into a safe, rear-facing position as to not damage the camera or the mechanism. YouTube/MKBHD

8. The Zenfone 6 has a massive 5,000 mAh battery, one of the biggest batteries in any smartphone you can buy. YouTube/MKBHD For comparison, Samsung's massive Galaxy S10 Plus has a 4,100 mAH battery, and the similarly large iPhone XS Max has a 3,174 mAH battery. (Milliamp-hours aren't always indicative of battery life - how the software uses the battery also plays a big role, for example - but it tends to be a pretty good indication of how much juice your phone will get.) We don't know exactly how many hours of battery life the Zenfone 6 will get, but we're going to guess that it should easily last you a full day - especially since LCD screens don't suck up as much power compared to phones with OLED screens or higher refresh rates.

It even has — <i>gasp</i> — a headphone jack. YouTube/MKBHD This is good in case your wireless headphones die, or you prefer a wired pair.