ROG Phone 5 First Impressions

ROG Phone 5

Asus recently launched its latest gaming smartphone ROG 5 in an online event. The phone comes with improved design and specs to ensure the best possible gaming experience. It starts at Rs. 49990, that’s impressive pricing considering the specs of the phone.

Buy Here: Flipkart

In the box, you will get the ROG Phone 5, Aero Case, Type-C cable and 30W power brick.

ROG Phone 5 comes with some key changes in the design and compared to the predecessor. This new phone is slightly longer and has smaller reels as compared to predecessor. The company has used latest Gorilla Glass Victus at the front and Gorilla Glass 3 at the back.

The power button and volume rockers are on the left side along with AIrTriggers. At the left, it has a SIM card tray, USB-C port, and pogo pin port for accessories. At the base, it has a USB-C port and headphone jack. Yes, the 3.5mm headphone jack is back in the ROG phone. Asus has added three Wi-Fi antennas into the ROG Phone 5. So, there will also be at least one antenna not blocked by your hands. It has also added four microphones placed throughout the body.

I received ROG Phone 5 in Phantom black with a glossy clean dot matrix design. The illuminated ROG logo at the back has also received updates. Now it supports 8 different lighting schemes.

The phone’s design has been optimised to use in the landscape mode because gamers will mostly use this phone in landscape mode.

ROG Phone 5 comes with a 6.78 inch AMOLED panel with a 144Hz refresh rate. The display also has 300Hz Touch-sampling rate and 24.3ms Touch Latency. It supports HDR10+ and boasts 800 nits of brightness. This display is really amazing for watching HDR content. Color accuracy also impresses. Even if there is support for 144Hz refresh rate, you can choose between 144Hz, 120Hz, 60Hz, or Auto refresh rate.

The phone packs Snapdragon 888 5G mobile platform that is the best Snapdragon processor available right now. This high-end Soc ensures the best possible performance. The Soc also is paired with an overclocked Adreno 660 GPU that promises to deliver 35% better performance. With the best possible setup, this phone is capable of running any high-end games smoothly. I didn’t test intense gaming but played a few games. This phone is super smooth.

The company has packed up to 18GB of LPDDR5 RAM and UFS3.1 fast storage to ensure smooth performance all the time. IN regular ROG Phone 5, you get 8GB and 12GB RAM models. ROG Phone 5 Pro and ROG Phone 5 Ultimate come with 16GB and 18GB RAM respectively.

Asus has also included the new GameCool 5 cooling system for better cooling. The most heat-generating components have been placed in the center. That’s the reason the company is using two batteries. This new layout is more suitable for external cooling with AeroActive Cooler.

I also received the AeroActive Cooler 5 accessory that you can clip-on the phone for better cooling. It uses the phone’s power and promises to drop the CPU temperature by 10 degrees C. It runs silently without making any irritating noise. AeroActive Cooler 5 hides the illuminating ROG logo of the phone, so it gets its own illuminating ROG logo. The most notable thing about AeroActive Cooler 5 is the two physical AirTrigger buttons. It also has a 3.5mm headphone jack and provides access to the USB-C port.

The phone runs on ROG UI based on Android 11 out of the box. Like in previous ROG phones, you can switch to ZenUI if you prefer a cleaner look. Asus has also partnered with some popular game titles to offer plenty of cool Animated lock screens, live wallpapers, icons, sounds, and in-call animation to gamers. The UI has a Game Genie that offers quick access to several tools you need during gaming. You can use it to stream games, customize Air triggers, change the refresh rate, and more.

Armoury Crate app lets you fine-tune the performance by changing gaming settings. You can tweak the performance mode, create game profiles and more.

The phone comes with a triple camera setup that includes 64 megapixels primary camera, 13 megapixels ultra-wide camera, and 5 megapixels macro camera. There’s also support for 3-axis EIS The camera setup can record up to 8K@30 fps videos and up to 4K @ 120 fps slo-mo videos. It also has 24 megapixels selfie camera. I didn’t get enough time to check the camera, so not including any camera samples. Will surely talk about the camera in the ROG Phone 5 Review.

It comes with an under-display fingerprint sensor that works well. The company has also included several fingerprint unlock animations and indicators to make the experience even better.

The stereo speaker setup on the phone performs well and offers really great-sounding audio. The headphone jack is back and the audio on the headphones is also really good. The phone also supports high-quality Bluetooth audio codecs such as aptX HD, aptX-Adaptive, LDAC, and AAC. The phone supports 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, NFC, and several positioning services such as GPS, Globass, Galileo, BeiDou, QZSS, NavIC.

The phone packs a large 6000mAh MMT Dual cell battery with support to 65W HyperCharge. The phone also supports Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 5/PD 3.0. As I already confirmed, the phone comes with a 30W charger. This big battery lasts longer and Asus has also included smart battery system modes.

ROG Phone is still the most popular gaming phone even if it has competition from brands like Black Shark, Red Magic and newcomer Lenovo. ROG Phone 5 may not be an affordable gaming phone, but it has the best you can get. This phone doesn’t want you to compromise. At the time when mobile games are an important part of esports, demand for gaming phones is all time high. I am still not done with the testing, so will talk about the phone’s performance and camera in detail later in the full review article.

Buy Here: Flipkart

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