Asus ROG Phone

Price: £799 from fave.co/2RqtwOk

2019-05-01 -

Gaming-focused smartphones are becoming more of a thing. We’ve been waiting for the ROG Phone since it was announced in June 2018, and we weren’t disappointed.

Design

In many ways, smartphone design has become stagnant and boring, but that’s not the case here. The ROG Phone is, as you might expect, eccentric and unconventional. ROG does stand for ‘Republic

of Gamers’ after all. Indeed, the phone has so many striking elements that it’s hard to know where to look first. There are unusual shapes everywhere, from the glass around the camera to the rear-mounted fingerprint scanner. Then there’s the large lump on the side, complete with exposed copper, which is matched on the front for the stereo speakers. And yes, the iconic ROG logo on the back lights up with customizable Aura RBG lights.

Overall, the device looks great, but you’ve got to be into this kind of style much like you do with Razer’s Phone 2 – they’re just very different approaches. Which you prefer is down to personal taste. Opinions at Tech Advisor towers are split.

What you can’t see here is the GameCool 3D vapour-chamber, which helps cool the device. This, along with a copper heat spreader, means 47 percent improved CPU cooling efficiency, according to Asus. Those copper bits on the back aren’t just for show either, they’re air vents.

If that’s not enough, the device comes with an AeroActive cooler in the box. This has a fan and clips

onto the phone via the slightly ugly looking custom USB port on the side. Not only does it add a controllable fan but USB-C and headphone ports too, so you can stay plugged in without the cable getting in your way while landscape gaming. That’s a pretty neat idea, and its also got a logo that lights up.

Also hidden is a set of ‘ultrasonic AirTrigger touch sensors’. Two of these are used for shoulder buttons when landscape gaming while the other is used like the HTC U12 or Pixel 2 XL so you can squeeze the phone when in regular orientation. They only need a light touch – 20g where others can need four times as much force – and are customizable, so you can make the most of them with what matter most to you. For some games, such as PUBG, they’re a godsend, while others see less impact. They’re not perfect though, as you need a compatible game, and they also don’t work well with games that require lots of tapping in a short space of time.

To add an extra dimension to your gaming experience, the ROG Phone also comes with what Asus calls “advanced vibration haptics”, so you can feel, for example, whether shots being fired are coming from the left or right.

The handset measures 158.8x76.2x8.3mm, which is roughly the same size as the Razer Phone 2. This is pretty big, plus it weighs 200g. That’s more than most smartphones, but understandable considering everything that’s going on and we didn’t find the weight too much of an issue during our time.

That USB-C port we touched upon earlier can be used to connect the phone to a range of accessories, including a Mobile Desktop Dock so you can connect to a monitor, keyboard and mouse. There’s also a Gamevice controller that lets you stream the phone to your TV via the Asus WiGig dock. This utilizes 11ad Wi-Fi and a TwinView Dock, which works a bit like a Nintendo DS to give you two screens.

Display

A large 6in screen makes sense here, to give you as much gaming real estate as possible. Asus has, however, gone for a different approach to Razer. Instead of a 120Hz LCD panel, the ROG Phone has a 90Hz AMOLED display with a 1ms response time. During our time with the phone, we found it was silky smooth in use. Note that the refresh rate is set to 60Hz by default.

The screen, like so many now, has an 18:9 aspect ratio and the resolution is Full HD+ (2,160x1,080) resulting in a decent 402ppi. That might be lower than the Razer Phone 2’s 2,560x1,440 (513ppi), but

it’s enough to look perfectly crispy and might even help some games run better. The choice of AMOLED means contrast is better, and we’re also impressed with both colours and brightness. Furthermore, there’s HDR support, so you can get the full experience if you’re watching compatible content on something like Netflix.

Performance

The ROG Phone continues to impress when it comes to core specifications. They are among the best we’ve ever seen on a smartphone.

For starters, it has the fastest version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 available. Asus says this has been ‘speed-binned’ to 2.96GHz – it’s normally 2.8GHz. In the software you can even choose what clock speed you want in certain apps. Add in that there’s 8GB of RAM as standard and this is some hefty amount of raw power. Asus claims it comes top in benchmarks such as AnTuTu, Geekbench and 3DMark.

The ROG Phone will also come with at least 128GB of storage but there will also be a model with a

whopping 512GB. Sadly, we can’t find the latter for sale in the UK. There’s no microSD card slot making this more of a shame.

As you can see in our benchmark results are impressive. However, we didn’t see any improvement when using the X Mode which promises better results. We’ve included the phone’s rivals to see how it compares. The graphics results are particularly impressive, thanks partly to the 90Hz display. The Geekbench result, should you care, is not the highest we’ve seen with various phones, including the iPhone XR and Huawei Mate 20 Pro, beating it.

Cameras

With such a focus on gaming, Asus has barely drawn any attention to the cameras – something that is

normally paramount on a modern phone. The ROG Phone does have dual rear cameras, though, at 8- and 12Mp. It appears to be the same setup as the Asus ZenFone 5 with the secondary camera offering a wide 120-degree view. At the front is a standard 8Mp camera.

If there’s an area of the phone that lets it down a little, then it’s here.

While photography is okay, there’s nothing to write home about here. Considering the price, we’d usually expect a higher quality, but the focus here is gaming, not photography.

Connectivity and audio

The ROG Phone comes with up-to-date specifications, including NFC, GPS, Bluetooth 5.0 with aptX HD, and the usual array of sensor you find on almost any phone such as light and proximity. There’s also dual-band 11ac/ad Wi-Fi and up to 1.2Gb/s LTE (Cat 18) thanks to the Qualcomm X20 modem.

On the audio side of things is a headphone jack (plus the side one via the detachable cooler mentioned earlier), DTS Headphone:X with 7.1 virtual surround sound and Hi-Res Audio support. The highlight, though, is the front-facing stereo speakers that come with a ‘smart amplifier’. They’re easily some of the most powerful we’ve heard on a phone.

Battery life

Like the Razer Phone, the ROG Phone has a large 4,000mAh lithium-ion battery – when 3,000mAh is about the average for a new smartphone. How long it will last is a big question, especially with the higher speed Snapdragon 845 and high fresh rate on the screen. In our usual test using Geekbench 4, it lasted six hours and 27 minutes. This is a pretty middle of the road result. When gaming in 90Hz and reasonable brightness, you’ll lose about 25- to 30 percent for every hour you’re playing. This means you’ll be charging a lot, so it’s a good job Asus has gone for quick charging.

It’s complicated though, as it depends which USB port you’re using.

The traditional port on the bottom supports Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0. However, the custom side socket supports up to Quick Charge 4.0 and Asus’s own HyperCharge direct charging, which can get the phone to a whopping 60 percent in just 33 minutes. Even using the bottom port we got an impressive 54 percent in 30 minutes, which is one of the best results we’ve seen.

Despite having a glass rear cover, the ROG Phone does not support wireless charging.

Software

The ROG Phone runs Android 8.1 Oreo software with Asus’ own ROG Gaming UI interface that looks very appropriate for the style of the phone.

The way the interface works is fairly stock, but it looks very different to a phone like the Pixel 3. Asus

has gone to town with it, which is exactly what we’d expect for a device like this, and it’s very specific target audience. Everything from icons to colours is overtly gaming in style. The interface even changes when you switch ‘X Mode’ on, including lighting up the borders around apps. The wallpaper even changes with a cool animation.

It’s these little things that will really appeal to gamers and add value. A bit like the design of the phone itself, you’ll probably love or hate it.

The Gamer Centre is the main addition when it comes to apps and if you’ve used Asus’s desktop overclocking suite before you’ll feel right at home. It provides plenty of information such as the temperature and clock speed for the CPU, as well as usage for memory and storage. You can also use the app to control things such as the Air Triggers, AeroActive fan speed and Aura lighting.

Game Genie is your friend if you want to customize things. If you’re playing a game, then you swipe in from the right and select the controller icon to load the interface. It provides game capture, live streaming, and more. You can also set profiles for individual apps and games from within the Game Centre such as the maximum CPU speed, screen refresh rate, and more.

Verdict

The Asus ROG Phone is a little difficult to sum up because it’s such a Marmite device – it will either be the kind of smartphone you’ve been waiting forever or pretty repulsive. One thing is for sure, and that is Asus has really gone to town with it and we applaud it

for doing so. If you’re going to make a gaming phone, then you might as well go hell for leather right? There are plenty of features for hardcore gamers to make use of here, including the AeroActive fan, AirTriggers and all the customization withing the software. While it will be many gamer’s dream phone, we don’t blame you if you prefer the more understated style of the Razer Phone 2. Chris Martin

Specifications

• 6in (2,160x1,080, 402ppi) AMOLED capacitive touchscreen

• Android 8.1 (Oreo)

• Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845 processor

• Octa-core (4x 2.96GHz Kryo 385 Gold, 4x 1.7GHz Kryo 385 Silver) CPU

• Adreno 630 GPU

• 8GB RAM

• 128GB, 512GB storage

• Dual rear-facing cameras: 12Mp, f/1.8, 24mm (wide), 1/2.55in, 1.4µm, 4-axis OIS, dual pixel PDAF; 8Mp, 12mm, no AF

• 8Mp front-facing camera: f/2.0, 24mm (wide)

• Dual-band 802.11ad Wi-Fi

• Bluetooth 5.0