ASUS ROG Phone Hands-On and First Impressions

The ROG Phone is expected to be coming. Really. I mean there are a lot of companies that are making a gaming-centric smartphone now and with the ASUS ROG Phone, we’re getting best of the ASUS Zenfone and the ASUS ROG brand in a single device.

Design of the ASUS ROG smartphone is genuine. It really brings the gaming feel to the smartphone. First, the ASUS ROG Phone packs a design that is unmistakably a ROG-branded device. We have a glossy black back with shiny metallic rims and of course, a ROG design and a dual-lens camera with augmented reality.

The ASUS ROG smartphone also comes with a USB Type-C and thankfully, a headphone jack. Another thing, the smartphone also packs a special port that is made for accessories and charging on the side so you can play on the smartphone on landscape mode.

One of the best things about this smartphone is the ROG logo at the back. The ROG logo at the back of the smartphone lights up like the ROG notebooks but this time, you can adjust the color of the logo and of course, activate it whether you want it to fade or not.

There are gaming specific features of the ASUS ROG smartphone too including the Air Trigger that lets you have customizable buttons for gaming. However, you have to press hard the Air trigger to activate it but it’s really a helpful feature if you love playing games like Asphalt or any Battle Royale games.

The smartphone comes with a 90Hz refresh rate 1ms AMOLED display. It’s the best AMOLED display in the market and yes, it does support HDR. Having a display like this is really essential especially if you’re playing online games and FPS games.

The ASUS ROG smartphone also comes with accessories which are the Twinview dock, retroactive controller, a mobile desktop dock, and a GameVice controller with the ASUS WiGig Dock.

The ASUS Twinview Dock is a really cool dock for the smartphone in where it offers you an additional display for the smartphone that can be used for an additional window on the smartphone in where you can open one application on one display and another application on another one. Not just that, it also comes with a shoulder triggers for gaming. This is really an essential accessory if you love streaming on the smartphone.

Another accessory is the retroactive cooler that gives you a cooling for your smartphone as long as you dock it on the smartphone. It also gives you a charging port and a headphone jack so you can still charge the smartphone and use a headset even if you’re charging it.

For FPS  gamers, they would surely love the mobile desktop dock that lets you dock your smartphone and plug in an external display. Not just that, you can also use a keyboard and mouse on the product so you can play FPS games or battle royale games with an advantage.

And lastly, the ASUS ROG phone will also have an accessory called the ASUS WiGig Dock and a gamevice controller specifically made for the ASUS ROG smartphone. The gamevice controller lets you have a controller that has a similar feel to the Nintendo Switch while the ASUS WiGig Dock lets you have a wireless display connected to a monitor or a TV. This basically makes the ASUS ROG Phone in competition with the Nintendo Switch.

According to ASUS, the smartphone has the highest benchmarks of all gaming smartphones thanks to its Snapdragon 845 Processor that is specifically made for the ASUS ROG Phone. It’s faster and it’s better compared to the competition.

In our hands-on, we also noticed that the smartphone will come with an augmented reality camera which is probably essential for some games. We’ll probably see more games with augmented reality features thanks to Google ARcore.

So basically, the ASUS ROG Phone competes against not just smartphones but also to consoles. Thanks to its accessories, the ASUS ROG Phone can do a lot of things and it’s basically a smartphone with a console heart. Unfortunately, the games that you can play on the smartphone are just Android applications that can be run on other smartphones too but hey, at least you get an advantage in hardware and design on the ASUS ROG Phone.