Asus’s ROG has announced its first gaming smartphone “Asus ROG Phone” at the Computex 2018 in Taiwan. The company ha not confirmed the pricing but told that it will be released in third quarter of 2018.
The phone has beautiful design where the front is all glass having cutouts at the top and bottom for a pair of stereo speakers. It has cooling vents with a dual camera system on the back.
This gaming phone comes with 6-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display that refreshes at 90hz with a 1ms response time. ASUS also claims Gaming HDR support and Mobile HDR is supported by dedicate hardware display chip. Display is also protected with Corning Gorilla Glass.
It is powered by 2.96GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with Adreno 630 GPU. It also has a sophisticated cooling system that included a copper heat spreader and 3D vapor chamber that efficiently transfer heat away from the processor. There is also an option to add an external AeroActive Cooler.
The phone comes with 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and offers 128GB (UFS 2.1) / 512GB (UFS 2.1) internal storage options. It runs on Android 8.1 (Oreo) with ROG Gaming X mode UI.
The phone has three ultrasonic pressure sensitive zones. One is on the side that can be squeezed to activate the “X MODE”. It optimizes performance by shutting down background tasks. It also activates the fan on the optional AeroActive Cooler accessory. The good thing is that this AeroActive cooler also includes USB-C port and a headphone jack so it don’t interfere with your hands on the bottom edge.
Other two pressure sensitive zones are at two corners in landscape mode. These are called “AirTrigger” and work as virtual trigger buttons. You can map these to any function within the game as long as it is supported.
The phone has 12 megapixels dual camera setup with f/1.8 aperture, 1.4µm pixel size, 1/2.55″ Sony IMX363 sensor, LED flash, 83° field of view, PDAF, 4-axis, 4 stops optical image stabilization and AI Scene Detection. It also has 8 megapixels front camera with f/2.0 aperture and 84° field of view.
As I already mentioned, the phone has dual front facing 5-magnet speakers with dual NXP 9874 smart amplifier and Hi-Res audio. It also has DTS Headphone:X 7.1 virtual surround sound for headphone.
There is also a TwinView dock that adds an additional 6-inch FHD+ AMOLED screen and controls. It has enhanced cooling, Dual speaker with Qualcomm smart amplifier, SD card slot and packs a 6,000mAh auxiliary battery.
There is also a Gamevice controller the attaches to either side of the phone. It includes WiGig Dock for streaming the game on big screen over 802.11ad connection.
The phone is WiGig-certified for 802.11ad 60GHz WiFi with both 2×2 MIMO and WiFi Direct. It also supports Gigabit Ethernet over Type-C. Other connectivity options include 4G VoLTE, Bluetooth 5, GPS/GLONASS/Beidou, USB Type-C and NFC. It packs 4000mAh battery with 30W charging that can charge from 0 to 60% in just 33 minutes and get to 85% in just over an hour.
The new ROG Phone is not the first phone for gamers. We have already seen Razer Phone and Black Shark phones in past. With these kinds of gaming phones, I see future of gaming on mobile devices.
ROG Phone will come with AeroActive Cooler but other accessories will be sold separately. It will also be available special bundle packs.
