If you think about mobile gaming, you probably expect a smartphone with great specs and a big battery. After years of making gaming laptops, ASUS has finally announced the ROG Phone. A radical smartphone for hardcore mobile gamers.
As you would expect, the ROG Phone is undoubtedly a performance beast. Upfront, it gets a 6.0″ Full HD+ AMOLED display with a wide-screen 18:9 aspect ratio. For a silky smooth visual experience, the screen has a 90Hz refresh rate with a 1 ms pixel response time. There’s also an image processing chip that pushes HDR display for gaming and video playback.
Under the hood, ASUS is turning it up to 11 with a speed-binned Snapdragon 845 processor that’s clocked at a higher 2.96GHz. In terms of benchmark performance, ASUS claims that it could score more than 300,000 points on AnTutu, beating the BlackShark and Razer Phone by a significant margin. It’s mated to 8GB LPDDR4 RAM with onboard storage options of 128GB or 512GB.
To avoid CPU throttling, the device gets a 3D vapor-chamber design for better cooling. If that’s not enough, there’s even an AeroActive Cooler which you can attach to the back of the ROG Phone.
For an immersive experience, it comes with a pair of front-facing stereo speakers and an advanced haptic actuator that gives you force-feedback while gaming. The ROG Phone even comes with AirTriggers at the top which are ultrasonic sensors that you can program for custom actions.
Since it’s still a smartphone, you do get a dual-camera 12MP + 8MP wide-angle setup at the rear, while the front comes with an 8MP selfie shooter. While you can charge the device via the standard USB-C port at the bottom, the ROG Phone comes with an extra side-mounted USB-C port which makes it practical to charge while you play in landscape mode. Unlike the other two gaming smartphones, it still comes with a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Juicing up the ROG Phone is a 4,000mAh battery and it supports ASUS’ 20W HyperCharge direct charging which claims to push 60% charge in just 33 minutes. Another nice addition to its 3D curved Gorilla Glass back is an ASUS Aura RGB lighting around the logo. You can customise the lighting effects for incoming calls and notifications.
To expand its gaming possibilities, ASUS has also introduced an optional TwinView Dock which turns the phone into a dual-screen console. The secondary screen has an identical 6″ AMOLED display and it gives you a total of quad speakers, two extra physical trigger buttons, dual-haptic force-feedback engine and enhanced cooling. Also included is a larger 6,000mAh battery for extended gameplay.
For a desktop gaming experience, there’s also the Mobile Desktop Dock which allows you to connect the phone to an external 4K UHD Monitor, keyboard and mouse. While docked, the phone also acts as a secondary display and you can even hook it up to gigabit LAN and a 5.1 channel surround sound system via its SPDIF port.
The last accessory is its Gamevice controller and WiGig Dock combo. This adds more physical gaming controls with dual analog joysticks and a D-pad plus extra buttons. For an ultra-low-latency wireless display connection, the WiGig Dock connects with a higher 60GHz 802.11ad WiFi.
There are no details on the pricing at the moment. However, we are told that the ROG Phone is expected to arrive in Malaysia as early as July 2018. If you’re a hardcore mobile gamer, is this the smartphone you’ve been waiting for? Let us know in the comments below.
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