Asus just announced a beastly new gaming smartphone at Computex 2018, introducing the powerful ROG Phone that will likely go head to head with the Razer Phone and the Xiaomi Black Shark.
The Asus ROG Phone is a gaming smartphone in and out, boasting an obvious gaming design, a high screen refresh rate of 90 Hz, a fast processor clocked at 2.96 GHz, and as much as 8 GB of RAM.
Asus ROG Gaming Smartphone
"Our first Android device combines special Snapdragon silicon with innovative cooling to produce silky frame rates you can actually sustain," says Asus. "Its uncompromised display blends blistering speed with beautiful HDR visuals, while programmable AirTriggers and tactile enhancements heighten your physical connection and comfort."
The company has also created a number of special accessories for the ROG Phone, which will allow gamers to dock it with a desktop, add a wireless display, get more battery, or add controls similar to a console.
The overclocked Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor with 8 GB of RAM and vapor cooling might be too much for the Android games currently available on the PlayStore, but the gaming phone screams power and it should be able to easily handle even more demanding games in the future.
Asus ROG Phone: Squeeze For X Mode
HTC introduced the squeezable phone concept with its Edge Sense technology, allowing users to squeeze the sides of the device to trigger certain functions, apps, or tasks. The Asus ROG Phone comes with a similar system, triggering a ramped-up X Mode by squeezing the sides.
The X Mode changes the blue UI elements into a fiery red, it shuts down background processes to maximize gaming performance and prioritizes the current game to allocate more RAM and resources. At the same time, this X Mode also manages the extra fan accessory called AeroActive Cooler so the phone doesn't overheat during intense gaming sessions.
Meanwhile, the AirTriggers Asus mentions are similar to shoulder buttons on game controllers, aiming to give users a more authentic gaming experience. These buttons are customizable, which means that users can program them so they can easily control what they need for their games of choice.
Other accessories include a gamepad setup, a Gamevice controller, and a TwinView Dock clamshell construction that turns the smartphone into a dual-screen phone by adding a secondary screen. The TwinView Dock also adds a 6,000 mAh battery in addition to a 6-inch full HD display, but it's quite massive and bulky.
Another dock allows users to connect the ROG Phone to a monitor, mouse, and keyboard, and use it as a PC.
Asus ROG Phone Specs
The beastly Asus ROG Phone comes with powerful specs all around. It features a 6-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 2,160 x 1,080 pixels, an 18:9 aspect ratio, a 90Hz refresh rate with a response time of 1ms, 1000:1 contrast ratio, and Glove Touch support.
Under the hood, it comes with an exclusive, overclocked version of the octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform clocked at 2.9 GHz, paired with 8 GB of RAM and either 128 GB or 512 GB of storage.
In the camera department, the ROG Phone has a dual rear camera setup with a 12-megapixel shooter and an 8-megapixel one, with 120-degree wide-angle lens, and an 8-megapixel front camera.
Other specs and features include dual stereo speakers on the front, complete with a smart amplifier and Hi-Res Audio (24-bit/ 192 KHz), a fingerprint scanner, a 4,000 mAh battery, USB Type-C, NFC, Bluetooth 5.0, wireless display support fast charging, Asus HyperCharge direct charging, a 3.5 headphone jack, and the usual array of sensors and connectivity options.
Asus has yet to offer any pricing information for its ROG Phone and accessories, but it surely won't come cheap. The handset is expected to hit the market sometime in the third quarter.
