ASUS ROG outs its first gaming smartphone

Text and photos by Nicole Batac

ASUS’s gaming brand Republic of Gamers just unveiled its first-ever gaming smartphone, taking on the likes of Razer and heating up this new niche segment. It seems like a no-brainer that the Taiwanese company set out to create its own gaming phone but what took them this long? According to ASUS, they wanted to make sure they weren’t just building a smartphone that was simply called a gaming phone but didn’t have any unique features to truly make it a gaming phone. What they set out to do with the ROG Phone is provide four key things: lag-free performance, efficient cooling, blur-free and stunning visuals, and gaming-centric handling.

The ROG Phone, which looks similar to the company's line of Strix gaming laptops, is powered by an overclocked Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor (at 2.9GHz) paired with a gaming-optimized Qualcomm Adreno 630 GPU, 8GB of RAM, and up to 512GB internal storage. It comes with a unique GameCool vapor-chamber cooling system and a detachable AeroActive Cooler to make sure you get consistent blur-free high frame rates for those graphic-intensive titles without overheating your phone.

It also comes with a 6-inch AMOLED HDR display that comes with 90Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time. Other gaming-centric features include a unique side-mounted port, where you plug in the AeroActive Cooler (pictured above), and serves as a second USB-C charging port. It’s in an idle spot when you’re playing in landscape and want to make sure the 4,000mAh battery doesn’t die on you. ASUS helps minimize heating when charging with its HyperCharge tech. This direct-charge technology delivers up to 20W of power for shorter, safer charge times. It has the charger IC in the charger itself instead of on the phone to make sure it stays cool when you’re charging.

The phone also has two programmable ultrasonic AirTriggers on the right side of the phone and force-feedback haptics to make it easier to play games that require multiple fingers on the screen as well as give you that feedback to be fully immersed in the game.

ASUS also developed three accessories to add more functionality to the phone. We’ll post about the accessories separately later so watch for that. No pricing or availability announcements yet. But during the event, the phone has been constantly compared to as expected the Razer Phone and the Galaxy S9 devices.