Asus ROG Phone
OVERKILL, FRESH, AND A LOT OF FUN.
GAMING PHONES LIKE the Razer Phone 2 and ROG Phone can be hard to review – do you judge them based on their gaming chops or as day-in, day-out smartphones?
Our reviews definitely fall in the latter camp, and while that didn’t work out too well for the Razer Phone 2, which scored a respectable but not excellent 3.5 out of 5, Asus’ ROG Phone phone is just… better.
For starters, it has more storage – 128GB in the cheapest variant, which is double that of the Razer Phone 2’s (and the iPhone XS series’) starting capacity. It also doesn’t forgo the 3.5mm headphone jack in favor of USB-C wired audio, and it features AMOLED display technology, not LCD.
That said, its specs across the board don’t trounce the competition – the screen refresh rate is 90Hz, as opposed to 120Hz on the Razer Phone series, while the ROG Phone doesn’t have wireless charging, and it doesn’t even feature the latest version of Android.
What it does bring to the party, however, may be more important than any of those: killer gaming features. Touch-sensitive AirTriggers that act as left and right gamepad buttons, on-screen hardware stats, in-game recording and streaming, recordable macros, an arsenal of accessories – this phone is most definitely for the players. But what about the rest of us?
As for the release date, it’s already out in the US, Taiwan, and UK, with no Australian availability as of yet; though it is available as an import through a number of suppliers, including Kogan.
The ROG Phone features a 6-inch FHD+
AMOLED display with HDR screen tech loaded up and a 90Hz refresh rate. Its design is termed “futuristic” on Asus’ website – and indeed, it looks like a seething, illuminating Decepticon.
This futuristic look begins with the light-up ROG logo on the phone’s rear, extends across to the patterning etched under the glass, and continues right through to its off-center, asymmetrical hexagonal fingerprint scanner and camera surround.
There’s plenty of power under the hood, with the same Snapdragon 845 that you’ll find in the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and Google Pixel 3 XL; in the ROG Phone, though, just as in the Razer Phone 2, it’s paired with 8GB RAM for even more oomph. The 128GB storage is also respectable, despite there being no expandable storage option, and if that isn’t enough a 512GB version is available in the US and some other markets.
The healthy 4,000mAh of battery keeping the ROG Phone going matches that in the Mate 20 and Huawei P20 Pro, falling just behind the current battery king, Huawei’s Mate 20 Pro with its 4,200mAh of power. The Asus ROG Phone runs Android 8.1, and is loaded up with an overclocked version of Asus’s ZenUI. This comes complete with fiercelooking mech-inspired design flourishes, and a live wallpaper that fires up in sync with the RGB logo on the back of the phone.
Android, 8.1, also known as Oreo, is last year’s version of Google’s Mobile OS. On the one hand this still supports all the apps and services you’d be getting in the newer Android 9 (Pie), but on the other it isn’t Google’s freshest update.
Your main interaction however is with Zen UI, Asus’s once heavy, now bearable skin that sits atop Android. It’s customizable, stable and not too bloated, with Asus’s proprietary software being limited to nine useful apps, including a calculator, sound recorder and gallery.
Where ZenUI flexes its muscles above and beyond the competition is in its tight integration of the new Game Center, debuting on the ROG Phone. Here you can customize game profiles, fire up X Mode, check geeky stats like your phone temperature and CPU load, and control accessories, like the fan that ships with the phone.
From a user interface point of view, therefore, it’s already a step ahead in terms of gaming, but it’s also got some neat day-to-day smarts in the settings.
For starters, you have a huge amount of control over screen calibration. The blue light filter helps limit blue light that can interfere with sleep patterns, while the additional color options support color temperature control in addition to three presets – wide colour gamut, standard and customised, with the first of those looking nice and poppy.
PERFORMANCE
The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor inside the Asus ROG Phone, which is overlocked at 2.96GHz versus the Razer Phone 2’s 2.8GHz clock speed, is paired with 8GB RAM.
Talking pure benchmarks, while Huawei hasn’t got the cleanest track record in this department, the Mate 20 and Mate 20 Pro currently beat out the ROG Phone across both Geekbench and Antutu.
That said, only Huawei phones get Kirin chips, and outside the Huawei – and of course, Apple – worlds, the ROG Phone reigns supreme, returning a Geekbench multi-core score of 9193.
Real-world use is unsurprisingly excellent. We’ve already gushed about how smooth the UI is, and gaming is effortless.
In terms of stamina, 90 minutes of FHD video playback, with the RGB lighting around the back fired up, took the battery down to 82%. Power down the lights and you can save yourself a hefty 7%, with the meter dropping to just 89%.
The main 12MP camera has an f/1.8 aperture and nice big 1.4μm pixels, as well as 4-axis OIS (optical image stabilization) and dual-pixel phase-detection autofocus. The secondary camera is an 8MP sensor with an f/2.2 aperture, and no OIS or autofocus, but at a super-wideangle 12mm equivalent that’s not a big deal.
The camera also supports up to 4K video up to 60fps, and slow motion at up to 240fps at 1080p, which keeps it really competitive.
These surprisingly positive specs translate to great photos and videos.
VERDICT
It may look like an irate Decepticon, but thanks to a really good camera, a great screen and excellent gaming performance, not to mention a suite of overkill accessories, the ROG Phone manages to get right much of what the Razer Phone 2 got wrong, making it a great smartphone and an excellent gaming phone.