Asus ROG Phone Packs in Heavy Specs To Woo Serious Gamers

Asus has without a doubt, sent a benchmark in the gaming smartphones sector.

The Asus ROG phone.

(Photo: ASUS)

Asus announced the ROG Phone at Computex 2018. Bearing the Republic of Gamers (ROG) name, this phone will be the second one after the Razer Phone to have a 90Hz display. It comes with a six-inch OLED display.

The ROG Phone is powered by a 2.96 Qualcomm snapdragon 845 processor and comes with an 8GB RAM. That’s a high processing power for a phone.

The only phone with a faster processor than ROG is the Porsche Design variant of the Huawei P20 Pro. The Asus ROG Phone is also the first-ever phone to have a 512GB storage option.

(Photo: Asus)

The X Mode

Squeezing the sides of the ROG Phone activates the gaming-optimised X Mode. There is a red glow on the sides where the pressure is applied.

Upon squeezing the sides, the complete UI of the phone switches to a red theme.

The X Mode optimises the phone for gaming by closing applications running in the background. Once in X Mode the processor prioritises the RAM and data transfer accordingly. The X Mode also activates the AeroActive Cooler, the additional fan accessory offered in the phone.

Accessories

• The ROG Phone comes with a bunch of quirky accessories. There is a classic gamepad setup, like the Moto Z’s Gamepad Moto Mod. It adds a couple of analog controllers, two sets of shoulder buttons and keys on both sides on the phone’s landscape display.
• There is also a clamshell accessory that adds a second screen, turning the ROG Phone into a dual screen phone. Asus is calling it the TwinView Dock. It is a matching six-inch 1080p screen.
• Asus also has a dock with some cable ports on the back, allowing users to use the phone as a pseudo-PC connected to a monitor, keyboard, and a mouse, or as an auxiliary display to your regular PC.

The sheer amount of tech and engineering achieved in this phone is crazy. The ROG Phone would make benchmark phones like the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S9 look obsolete. However, the product is too niche for a market like India and we are not sure as to if and when it will make it to our stores.

The pricing of the ROG Phone has not been announced at Computex, but given the specs, one can expect the prices to be astronomical. It would easily cost as much as an iPhone X.

Specifications

• Processor: Speed-binned 2.96GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 845
• GPU: Qualcomm Adreno 630
• Display: 6-inch, 18:9 (2160 x 1080) OLED panel with 90Hz refresh rate and 1ms pixel response time; includes HDR support and 108.6 percent DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage
• Dimensions: 158.8mm x 76.2mm x 8.6mm
• Weight: 200g
• Battery: 4,000mAh
• Memory: 8GB RAM
• Storage: 128GB or 512GB
• Wireless: 802.11ad Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5
• Headphone jack: Yes
• Audio: Dual front-facing stereo speakers; 24-bit/192kHz DAC; DTS Headphone:X 7.1-channel virtual surround sound; AptX support