Asus revealed its new ROG Phone that’s designed with specs, features, and accessories specifically for gaming.
Asus’ ROG brand is the company’s gaming division, which stands for “Republic of Gamers.” The ROG brand makes gaming computers, gaming PC components, peripherals, and accessories. And now, it’s making smartphones!
Check out the power, features, and accessories for the Asus ROG Phone that make it look like a veritable gaming machine:
On the front, the Asus ROG Phone looks more or less like a regular smartphone, but it has extra powerful specs compared to your typical high-end Android smartphone.
Inside the ROG Phone, you’ll find the Snapdragon 845 processor that most 2018 high-end Android smartphone are using. There’s one major difference though: The chip model in the ROG Phone has been “overclocked” to 2.96GHz, whereas the typical Snapdragon 845 chip in most high-end Android smartphones is clocked at 2.8GHz.
That’s an extra 160MHz of processing power. It’s a slight performance bump compared to to the typical Snapdragon chip, but it’s more powerful than typical Android smartphones like the Galaxy S9 nonetheless.
The ROG Phone also has 8GB of RAM, whereas typical high-end Android phones come with about 4GB of RAM. That extra RAM lets the phone perform more smoothly, and undoubtedly helps with game performance.
Apart from more powerful specs, the ROG Phone’s display is also suited for better game performance than most smartphones.
The ROG Phone has a 90Hz display, which means it can refresh itself 90 time per second. Most smartphones have 60Hz displays. It essentially means that games can play at 90 frames-per-second (fps), which is visibly smoother than 60 fps.
Only the Razer Phone with a 120HZ refresh rate beats the ROG Phone. However, the ROG Phone has a superior AMOLED display compared to the regular LCD display on the Razer Phone. AMOLED displays can produce deeper colors and better contrast than LCD displays.
Flip it over to the back, and you start to get a gamer aesthetic.
The back of the ROG Phone has a fairly typical, over-designed gamer aesthetic complete with an Asus ROG logo that can light up in different colors. This kind of colorful lightshow know as “RGB” is all the rage in gaming PCs. Just take a look at an “ideal” gaming PC complete with RGB lighting:
That extra power means extra heat, so Asus made an accessory that includes a built-in fan to cool down the phone while you’re playing a game.
On its own, the ROG Phone has a pretty standard cooling system that you’d find on most high-end Android smartphones, which would suffice for regular smartphone usage.
Once you start up a game, though, the extra powerful processor in the ROG Phone could produce more heat than your typical high-end Android phone.
At a certain heat threshold, processors will actually reduce their performance, which is often referred to “thermal throttling.” So Asus will include an accessory for the ROG Phone that has a built-in fan to wick away the heat from the ROG Phone.
It speaks to the PC gaming community, which is obsessed with keeping their gaming systems cool to prevent thermal throttling and maintain the highest performance possible.
The ROG Phone has extra buttons for games.
“AirTrigger” buttons on the ROG Phone’s left edge act like the shoulder buttons on a console game pad controller to give you extra controls while gaming.
The TwinView dock turns the phone into a veritable handheld gaming device with a second screen and more buttons.
The ROG Phone can be placed into Asus’ TwinView handheld accessory that comes with a second screen.
It’s not yet clear how games available in the Google Play Store can take advantage of this second screen. Still, it’s a similar concept to Nintendo’s 3DS handheld device:
And you can place the ROG Phone in the a mobile desktop dock if you want to use a full-size computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
Docking the ROG Phone to a computer monitor, keyboard, and mouse would be perfect for games like the mobile versions of “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” and “Fortnite.” You’d get the superior controls of a keyboard and mouse, and the extra visibility from a full-size computer monitor, which would certainly give you an advantage over people that are playing on their phone.
The ROG Phone in the dock supports ultra-high resolution 4K monitors, which is pretty impressive for a mobile device. The dock also comes with a variety of ports, much like a full-size computer.
You can also connect the ROG Phone to your TV wirelessly.
Asus’ WiGig dock is a console gamepad controller that fits on the ROG Phone, and it has gaming buttons and joysticks that console gamer are accustomed to.
The WiGi dock can also connect to smart TVs, and it can stream games from the ROG Phone to the TV.
The main camera is 12 megapixels, while the 8-megapixel camera has a 120-degree ultra wide angle. The front camera is 8 megapixels. It’s a pretty standard setup for most smartphones these days, but I’ll have to test the cameras myself before deciding whether the cameras are any good or not.
There’s no detail on the exact release date or pricing of the ROG Phone yet.
