Asus introduced a new smartphone earlier this month in cooperation with the sub-brand Republic of Gamers (ROG). The Asus ROG Phone is specially designed for mobile gaming. The Android device has ultimate specifications for gamers.
Asus ROG Phone
ROG was founded in 2006 by Asus; since then, the brand has released several high-end gaming products, including an Asus ROG gaming monitor, a gaming laptop, and a gaming headset. Various hardware components have also been released under the brand name ROG, including a motherboard, a video card, and a GPU. Now there is a real gaming smartphone.
It is certainly not the first smartphone designed for the mobile gamer. Last year the Razer Phone was introduced, this phone became the absolute winner in our list of best smartphones for gaming. Earlier this year, the Xiaomi Black Shark was unveiled, with its large battery and an optional gamepad aimed at gamers. The new Oppo Find X also features a special game acceleration mode. Asus throws a different approach and knows how to deliver a gaming smartphone with the ROG Phone.
A gaming smartphone with a cooling
The Asus ROG smartphone is powered by the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with up to 8GB of RAM memory. The processor delivers an unbelievably high clock speed of 2.96 GHz, which is almost 200MHz faster than is normally the case with the Snapdragon 845. In order to ensure that the boosted processor does not overheat during gaming, a cooling system is also installed.
In addition, the ROG Phone has a 6-inch OLED display with a Full HD + resolution (2160 × 1080 pixels). The screen has a refresh rate of 90Hz, i.e. every second a picture is refreshed 90x, which ensures very smooth animations. This is slightly slower than the 120Hz of the Razer Phone, but still significantly faster than a regular smartphone. Ideal for playing fast action games.
The ROG smartphone has an extremely wide color palette and can also display HDR images, making all graphics look particularly vibrant and crystal clear. The extra sensitive touchscreen display can even be operated with gloves.
No matter how nice the display is, gaming via a touchscreen control is not ideal. Interesting are the AirTriggers, these nicely concealed shoulder buttons can be used as triggers. A third AirTrigger has even been added, for when you play in portrait mode. The buttons can also be configured for non-gaming tasks.
At the front are double speakers built in with Smart Amp technology, to produce more volume with less distortion. In addition, it is possible to connect an external headset to the ROG Phone.
There is also a special X-mode available, where the minimum clock speed is increased to keep the CPU sharp during gaming. This can be activated via the quick menu, but users can also choose to activate this mode automatically when a game is started.
Naturally, this Asus gaming smartphone is also equipped with different cameras. On the back is a dual camera with 12-megapixel and 8-megapixel resolution. The 8MP camera has a 120° wide-angle lens. The selfie camera also has an 8-megapixel image sensor. Furthermore, this Asus smartphone is equipped with a fingerprint scanner, to unlock the device in no time.
The Asus ROG smartphone is equipped with a powerful 4,000 mAh battery, which after 85 minutes has already been recharged. Charging is via the USB-C port. This is not as usual on the bottom of the device but on the side. Convenient, because that way the cable is never in the way when you are gaming (in landscape mode). The device also offers 128GB or 512GB of fast UFS 2.1 storage.
Asus ROG price & availability
Asus has not announced anything about the sales price. Although Asus usually delivers a good price/quality ratio, the ROG production series is known to be belonging to the premium segment. Combined with these high-quality smartphone specs, it is no different than that this is a pricey device. The Asus ROG Phone will be on the market in the third quarter, by which time the price will be announced.
Asus also has many interesting accessories for sale that can be used with the gaming smartphone. Think of the Mobile Desktop Dock, for example, to build a complete desktop around the ROG Phone. Or the WiGig dock, with which you can stream the image from your phone to a TV. The TwinView Dock can also be connected to Asus latest smartphone. This gives you a second, equally large screen at your disposal, for a similar game experience as with the Nintendo 2DS handheld console.
