Asus ROG Phone Review

Asus isn't known for its high-end phones and traditionally, they've penetrated mid-range segment and attempted to bring a lot of value to consumer at a lower price. That changes now with advent of gaming smartphones in market. As more and more gaming smartphones are coming out, Asus decided to give it a shot as well, with its famous gaming lineup brand, ROG (Republic of Gamers). Previously, ROG series featured gaming laptops and peripherals with flashy branding, beefy specs and RGB lighting and Asus is bringing all that to smartphones now, with its brand-new gaming flagship device, ASUS ROG Phone. Question remains, as there have been a couple of entrants in this gaming smartphone segment, is Asus ROG Phone capable of penetrating this market which already has a niche set of customers? Let's find out.

Asus ROG Phone follows ROG design language, with sharp lines, a black finish and distinctly 'gamer' looks. Design breaks away from usual handset aesthetic with a sleek but chunky look, much like ROG gaming laptops. From front it looks like a regular metal-framed handset with Gorilla curved glass but flip it over and diamond cut highlights and copper detailing clearly mark this out as a gaming device.

At front, there's a large display with thick bezels and while Asus ROG Phone doesn't have a notch in screen, there's another speaker grille indented in top bezel, and an identical grille in bottom bezel, both in a reddish-gold color, to continue stealthy looks of phone. There are no physical buttons at front as this phone is intended to be used with a gaming pad and physical buttons would be very impractical.

At back, most of phone is covered in glass, with a cut-out metallic section on right side that houses speaker grilles. While Asus says there's glass on back, it does feel more like plexiglass than Gorilla Glass backs you find on flagships today. Even fingerprint sensor, camera and flash modules on back of this phone are distinct from other phones, and you see a glowing ROG logo under them. And yes, ROG logo does light up, and you can change its color if you want. Specifically, metal sides have hard-line edges all around them and an RGB ROG logo that changes color every few seconds is embedded on its back. Thankfully, you can turn RGB lighting off in the phone's custom Republic of Gamers app, which also lets you see things like the CPU and GPU temperature. But even when you do, this isn't a subtle phone and most non-gamers will likely be put off by design. On right side of back, there's a unique design cut out with colored grilles and you'll find Republic of Gamers branding printed vertically at bottom of this phone.

There's a power and volume buttons on right, accompanied by two USB Type-C ports for attaching accessories. There's another Type-C port on bottom for charging phone. Thankfully, you also get a 3.5 mm headphone jack so that's a win situation.

Overall, Asus ROG Phone looks every bit of a gaming device as it is intended to be. Its flashy, solid, rugged and got all that RGB DNA most Asus ROG products have. In other words, Asus ROG fans are in for a treat with this device.

A gaming smartphone needs a screen capable of complimenting gamer specs and that's exactly what you get to see on Asus ROG Phone. Phone has a 6 inch Full HD AMOLED display with resolution of 1080x2160p, pixel density of 401 ppi and aspect ratio of 18:9.

Display is pretty impressive but it doesn't match 120Hz refresh rate seen on Razer Phone. However, even at 90Hz it's still a significant improvement on most competing phones that are locked to 60Hz. Playing games and streaming movies, AMOLED and HDR-ready screen was significantly more reactive and smooth compared to Google Pixel 2.

Display also looks absolutely stunning in flesh, with colors oozing off screen and those lovely inky shadows and blacks that only AMOLED can provide. Partnered with that ultra low response time, there's just not a hint of lag or ghosting anywhere to be found. It's so slick, in fact, that it even looks smoother when you're just flicking through Android's menus and home screen.

According to Asus, it's also more reactive than Razer Phone, featuring a 1ms response rate. Colors were a little oversaturated for my liking, but lighting conditions mean my naked eye impressions may have been off. My only serious concern about screen is that it is locked to run at 90Hz. Unlike Razer Phone, Asus ROG Phone doesn't have a variable refresh rate that can be automatically or manually adjusted on an app-by-app basis. This isn't a problem if performance is your primary concern, but it will impact phone's battery life. A higher refresh rate increases number of times a phone has to render an image on screen each second. This increased number of cycles will require more power and hence will hit battery timing of phone. Display also features 108.6% DCI-P3 color gamut coverage and a 10,000:1 contrast ratio. which is highly impressive. Icing on the cake is HDR support which is also on the cards, with native support for Amazon, Netflix and YouTube HDR standards, as well as ability to convert SDR content to HDR on the fly, just like Sony Xperia XZ2.

There's gorilla glass protection on display of this device, however, Asus hasn't mentioned Gorilla Glass version of it. In my opinion, it's a display which will carry out all needs of a smartphone gamer and it is providing a balanced equation for gamers at 90 Hertz frame rate.

Asus is famous for beefing up specs on their products and same is seen on Asus ROG Phone. It has an overclocked Snapdragon 845 processor, at 2.9 GHz, about 100 MHz higher than normal. This is coupled with Adreno 630 GPU and 8 GB of RAM, with storage options of either 128 GB or 512 GB.

Performance wise, it was exceptionally smooth, all thanks to top of the line, overpowered specs. Even while casting a game to a TV, which requires a lot of resources, it ran perfectly fine and there were no lag or hiccups whatsoever. One major concern I had was that phone would overheat due to an overclocked processor and GPU, however, ASUS did think of that. Having such high spec also means that Asus ROG Phone needs to have some serious cooling to keep things running at their peak and this is provided by GameCool system. It comprises of vapor-chamber cooling, a carbon cooling pad and copper heat spreader. Plus, just in case you really want to go all-in with an extensive gaming session, Asus ROG Phone also comes bundled with an external Aeroactive cooler for good measure.

This adds an extra fan to mix and forces air into the phone from outside. I found it also helped device to feel a little more secure in my hands as I played. Aeroactive bolt-on also enables power and headphone connections to be run off side of phone, so that cables are unobtrusive while phone is being held in portrait mode. Regular power slot is also positioned on center of side for gaming when peripheral isn't attached.

Another great touch is the utilization of AirTriggers, two programmable ultrasonic sensors that give you game controls through haptic feedback. You just float your fingers above edge of screen, leaving whole screen free for visuals. When I tried it, I found that it was intuitive and meant I got to enjoy gaming experience rather than constantly looking down for on-screen buttons when using a regular mobile device.

Asus is also launching some accessories to compliment gaming experience on Asus ROG Phone. First, there is handheld TwinView dock which takes a page from Nintendo's book, introducing a secondary display which is identical to that of phone itself. Basically, it turns phone into a handheld console, complete with physical triggers on back. Most importantly, Asus will be working with mobile game developers in order to ensure that various games will take advantage of this second screen. TwinView dock uses Asus's Wigig docking and 802.11ad to provide Wi-Fi speeds of up to 4.66GHz. That means lag-free gaming on the big screen, and without a single wire in sight. Then, there's a desktop dock which essentially turns your phone into a desktop PC. Dock comes with a abundance of ports that you'd find on any motherboard: Ethernet, HDMI, DisplayPort, and multiple USB ports. With this dock, you will be able to play games on an external display with a keyboard and mouse, just like you would on an actual gaming PC.

Asus ROG Phone scored 304183 on Antutu benchmark which is one of the highest scores I've seen. You also get multiple USB Type-C connectors for accessories. On audio side of things is a headphone jack (plus the side one via detachable cooler mentioned earlier), DTS Headphone:X with 7.1 virtual surround sound and Hi-Res Audio support. Highlight, though, is front facing stereo speakers that come with a 'smart amplifier'. They're easily some of the most powerful speakers I've heard on a phone.

In summary, this is pretty much like Asus ROG laptops, which are overclocked, heavily powered and come with some great cooling tech to keep device running for long times. It's just impressive how Asus managed to deliver all that inside a smartphone.

Asus ROG Phone comes with a large 4000 mAh battery, similar to that on Razer Phone. Asus says you will get 11 and a half hours of video playback and 7 hours of gameplay, both over Wi-Fi. If it does run out quickly, there's some impressive sounding tech going on here in terms of charging. It's complicated though as it depends which USB port you're using.

Traditional port on bottom supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0. However, custom side port supports up to Quick Charge 4.0 and Asus own HyperCharge direct charging, which can get phone to a whopping 60 percent in just 33 minutes. Even though phone's back is made of glass, it doesn't support wireless charging but being a gaming device, I never expected this phone to even support it.

I personally think that battery on this phone is very decent and for people who might need extra juice, there's an extra 6000 mAh battery pack available with TwinView Dock.

With such a focus on gaming, Asus has barely drawn any attention to cameras, something that is normally paramount on a modern phone. Asus ROG Phone have a dual cameras setup at rear with one 12MP sensor and an 8MP sensor. It appears to be same setup as on Asus ZenFone 5 with a secondary 8 MP camera offering a wide 120-degree view. Cameras support PDAF and can shoot videos till 4K at 30 fps.

It has 4-axis stabilization, for better low light results. You can see this in action even when you simply hold Asus ROG Phone with camera app running. Movement appears smoothed-out. Geometric distortion lens causes can be used to dramatic effect too as straight lines in architecture of buildings become curved, particularly near edge of frame. Best part of Asus ROG Phone's camera aside from flexibility of dual-view shooting is its HDR optimization.

This phone has very effective high dynamic range processing. At times it can seem a little unrealistic, bordering on fantastical, as if bright cloudy skies have been rendered by a computer game. But photos are often striking. There are two problems with HDR. At times it can cause ghosting, where you can see movement in scene overlaid on top of original exposure. This is usually an issue when there's too much of a time gap between shots. At other times HDR just doesn't kick in. On several occasions I shot multiple images of same scene. Some ended up as nicely exposed HDR photos, others were labeled HDR but had dramatically overexposed areas.

In summary, I'd say that sometimes Asus ROG Phone takes excellent photos and sometimes it looks as though something has gone a bit wrong in process, or app just gets on your nerves with its inconsistent performance.

Asus ROG Phone has all hardware components needed for it to be a great gaming smartphone and for hardware to function properly, software needs to be at right pace too. Phone is shipped with Android 8.1 Oreo with a custom Asus Gaming UI interface, that look very appropriate for style of this device.

Overall, it appears to be fairly stock Android even though it looks quite different due to elements like icon pack. There doesn't seem to be much bloatware, although this can change by the time, especially via networks. Asus namely adds Game Center which provides you with an overview of system resources and this is also where you can adjust the fan speed of the AeroActive Cooler. You get an insight of your phone's CPU's core speeds, it's frequency levels and how much is it overclocking, together with temperature of cores. Personally, I really like the fact that we can adjust speed of AeroActive Cooler as at times you might want it to run slower to save battery life, and at other times, you might want it to run at full speed.

Another great software feature on this phone is called X Mode, which gives users ability to disable activities that sap phone's 8GB RAM with a simple tap. Customizable menu can also disable other pesky apps and actions, such as incoming phone calls or notifications as well - freeing up full capabilities of unit for gaming. Of course, some people may prefer to have notifications or other apps running at same time as gaming, and this is entirely possible with TwinView Dock that features an additional, auxiliary 6-inch AMOLED screen. X Mode also prevents RAM-eating and battery-sapping app activity, based on a customizable list of apps.

In the end, I would say that most gaming fans won't be expecting a stock Android experience on this phone, and rightly so, as gaming devices need gaming software and Asus nails that part about this phone.

Asus ROG Phone will be available in market late Summer according to Asus with a price unknown as yet. Phone will be available in black color and in two storage options: 128 GB and 512 GB. It's fair to say that Republic of Gamers has put a lot of thought into design and specs on Asus ROG phone. It is not just a gaming device, but a super powerful mobile handset in its own right. It looks like it will be a solid device that's perfect for gamers but a little overwhelming for everyone else. Even I, as a gamer, winced at over the top design and slathering of RGB lighting, but to be fair, it is what Republic of Gamers brand has been through-out these years.

While I'll need to put Asus ROG Phone properly through its paces before I can deliver a more considered verdict, it's safe to say it represents real innovation in smartphone market. Companies are trying to make 'gaming phone' a thing, and Asus may have taken the biggest step towards achieving this. It's certainly a niche product, but it could easily be marketed as a flagship device. Moreover, if it's successful enough, Asus may look to produce variants of this device and, with developer support, make a true phone/handheld console hybrid.

It's a real rival for Razer Phone and is unlike almost every other smartphone on market. Aim is to provide best gaming experience possible and Asus has gone to town to provide this. It looks to have achieved this with a number of neat features including AreoActive Cooler and AirTriggers, not to mention overclocked Snapdragon 845 processor, a 90Hz AMOLED screen and a possible 512GB of on-board storage.

In the end, I would like to say that it's impossible not to be impressed by sheer amount of thought and engineering that Asus poured into this phone. This device and its mini ecosystem of gamer-friendly accessories have clearly been in works for a while. It's one of the most sincere and ambitious efforts to make Android gaming phones a legitimate category in its own right. I still think this task is an uphill one, but Asus deserves credit for putting its best foot forward. Given its wild specs, we should probably brace ourselves for an uncompromising price to go along with uncompromising performance: over a thousand dollars for sure. For gaming enthusiast, that won't matter much as this phone truly delivers a gaming performance and ecosystem every mobile gamer has dream of.