First impressions: ASUS ROG Phone

Officially launched in Computex 2018, the ASUS ROG Phone has finally arrived in the Philippines. As the first smartphone to carry the ROG brand, the ROG Phone aims to dominate the ever-increasing mobile gaming scene. So what does the ROG Phone have what other smartphones don’t? Let’s find out.

A more powerful chipset

Like most flagship smartphones in the market today, the ASUS ROG Phone comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chipset. What separates the ROG Phone from other smartphones that its Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 is speed-binned to reach clock speeds of up to 2.9GHz, which is almost 200MHz over the stock 2.8GHz clock speed of a regular chip.

Of course, more speed on a chipset means more heat for the smartphone to dissipate. To keep the chipset cool, the ROG Phone has developed a new GameCool 3D Vapor Chamber cooling system. This new system, ASUS says, has a 16x larger dissipation area that leads to 60% improved cooling efficiency and 5x longer peak endurance.

For even better cooling, the smartphone automatically comes with an Aeroactive Cooler that acts as an external cooler. This allows the smartphone to keep cool even longer despite an intense gaming situation.

Aside from the binned Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, the ROG Phone comes with 8GB of RAM to allow its user to open more apps as well as dedicate more RAM to more intensive games. The ROG Phone also comes with up to 512GB of storage, which should suffice the needs of most people when it comes to installing games as well as media consumption.

Better screen for improved immersion

To get a more colorful and responsive gaming experience, the ASUS ROG Phone comes with a 6.0-inch FullHD+ AMOLED screen that supports 108% DCI-P3 Wide color gamut, 10,000:1 contrast ration, as well as allows the full HDR experience.

The screen also has a 90Hz refresh rate for games that will support it. For those not in the know, most smartphones (as well as monitors) only displays 60Hz, which means that it can only display up to 60 frames per second. Displays with higher refresh rates can show more frames per second. The ROG Phone might not be able to display more than 90 frames per second but when you consider that you’re getting better colors as well as a higher refresh rate that most smartphones, the ROG Phone will deliver a better gaming experience than most smartphones.

Improved ergonomics

The inherent fault in most smartphones when playing and charging at the same time is that the cable interferes with the grip of the smartphone. To alleviate this problem, the ROG Phone comes with several Type-C ports. The first USB Type-C port is located at the bottom, which is the usual location for a charging port.

When gaming, however, the ROG Phone gives its user to the choice to use two more USB Type-C ports at the right-hand side. When playing in landscape mode, the ROG Phone’s additional USB Type-C points down so it isn’t in your hand’s way while playing games.

Speaking of charging, the ROG Phone comes with 4,000mAh battery, which should reach up to 7 hours of continuous online play. If you ever come up short with the battery, the ROG Phone comes with its own ROG HyperCharge technology, that allows the smartphone to reach 60% of charge in just over half an hour.

The ROG Phone will arrive today at ESGS 2018 with an expected starting price of PhP 49,995.