Asus Zenfone Pegasus 3

Battery life is the headline here. A 4100 mAh cell is unusually large for a budget phone from this era, and paired with a modest 720p, 5.2-inch IPS LCD screen and a Mediatek MT6737 quad-core chipset, it's built to stretch through a full day without much strain. You get a choice of 2GB RAM with 16GB storage or 3GB RAM with 32GB storage, plus a microSD slot for up to 256GB more, though that shares space with the second SIM slot.

Camera-wise it's a 13MP rear shooter with LED flash and a 5MP front camera, covering the basics like autofocus, HDR and panorama without pushing into flagship territory. There's a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor too, which was still a nice-to-have feature at this price point back in 2016. Asus Zenfone Pegasus 3 price in Malaysia starts from RM588.

It runs Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow with Asus's ZenUI layered on top, and comes in gold, silver, gray or rose gold. At 158.4g and 8.6mm thick, it's not a lightweight phone, but that's the tradeoff for the bigger battery inside.