ASUS held an event today in China where it announced a bunch of products including the ROG Phone. The ROG Phone was first announced about three months ago but has now gotten an official launch in China along with pricing details.
ROG Phone Design
With respect to design, the ROG Phone doesn’t look like your average phone. It comes in black with copper-colored accents for the cooling vents on the back and the front-facing speakers in front. There is an RGB LED underneath the ROG logo on the back with different modes including static, breathing, strobe and color cycling. The dual camera housing and the fingerprint scanner are also weirdly shaped. It isn’t a beautiful phone neither is it ugly but it stands out.
ROG Phone Specs
The ROG Phone packs a 6.0-inch 2160 x 1080 AMOLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time. The screen has an 18:9 aspect ratio but sports moderately-sized bezels at the top and chin. Both bezels are home to the front-facing stereo speakers.
The phone is powered by the Snapdragon 845 processor but unlike other phones powered by the same processor and clocked at 2.8GHz, the one in the ROG Phone is clocked at 2.96GHz. There is 8GB of RAM paired with 128GB or 512GB of storage.
Sitting on the rear is a 120° wide-angle Sony IMX363 12MP f/1.7 primary sensor and an 8MP secondary sensor. Another 8MP f/2.0 camera sits above the display for video calls and selfies. ASUS says the cameras are packed with AI features such as scene recognition.
There is a 4,000mAh battery under the hood with support for Hyper Charger (30W fast charge) and Quick Charge 4.0. ASUS has put the charger’s IC inside the charger rather than inside the phone to keep the phone cool when charging.
The ROG Phone has a specially designed 3D vapor cooling chamber that keeps the device from overheating. It also has support for specially designed accessories that attach to the device. One of the accessories is the AeroActive Cooler which is a clip-on cooling fan. An app within the phone allows users to set the fan’s speed or turn it on or off. With the cooler on, the device’s surface temperature can be brought down up by up to 4.7 °C.
There are other accessories such as the Mobile Desktop dock that turns it into a full desktop PC, a gamepad dock, and the TwinView Dock which has an extra screen and a built-in 6,000mAh battery.
The phone also has air triggers on the right side of the device which acts like shoulder buttons when playing games. It also has a special X-Mode that is activated by squeezing the frame of the phone. Once activated, background tasks are stopped and all processing power is channeled to the game.
READ MORE: Asus ZenBook S packs the latest 8th-gen Intel Core chips and offers up to 20 hours usage
ROG Phone Pricing
The ROG Phone starts at ¥5999 (~$875) for the 8GB RAM + 128GB version and jumps to ¥7999 (~$1165) for the 8GB RAM + 512GB version. A third version which is called the E-sports Armor Limited Edition is priced at ¥12999 (~$1895). We have no idea what is included in the Armor Edition but we believe it has a bunch of special accessories in the box. You can pre-order the device on JD.com before it goes on sale on September 26.
