We get a lot of news about processors and great specs that new devices provide. Newer devices are getting powerful. But today, we are taking a somewhat different route than usual. Let’s talk about the “Most Powerful Smartphone in The World“. We are going to be talking about the “Asus ROG Phone 2“.
Overview of the Asus ROG Phone 2
Asus ROG is just like any other smartphones made today. The device has an aluminum frame with a glass back. However, the phone is different in terms of various aspects if we compare it to our newer flagships.
Asus took a full-on gaming approach on this device. The device exerts a gaming aura and look. Therefore, it’s a different approach if we compare it to some other devices. The device looks aggressive and ready to fight at any moment. But the colors are boring.
Moreover, the body is rounded. The Asus ROG Phone II packs quite a punch and it’s an absolute beast in terms of performance. The phone is taller and thicker due to its powerful internals. The phone is a successor to the Asus ROG Phone and is heavier than the previous device.
If we compare it to last year’s model, you will get a taller screen coupled with an insane 6000 mAh battery. The good thing is that unlike the previous model, the cooling system does not interfere in terms of experience which is quite good.
As expected from a gaming phone, the Asus ROG Phone 2 does have an RBG lighting at the back. You get quite a lot of options for colors and choosing patterns on the back. You do have an option to turn in off too (Sorry Bixby).
Let’s talk about the screen first.
Display Asus ROG Phone 2
It has an impressive AMOLED Touchscreen at 1080p. Moreover, the display is 6.59 inches huge. The resolution that this device provides is 1080 x 2340p. With the 391 Pixels Per inch. It has a tall aspect ratio of 19.5:9.
There is a big bezel in which the front camera resides. There’s also a bottom chin as well. According to Asus, the bezels will provide you palm rest while gaming. Therefore, the gaming experience will be quite good.
The display is responsive for a smartphone. With the optimization of their software, they’ve achieved a good display with a higher refresh rate. As you know, gaming is all about responsiveness, so Asus ROG Phone 2 will give you plenty of responses too.
Here’s the good part. The display has a refresh rate of 120 hertz. This is more than twice than most of our smartphones today. Therefore, while scrolling or watching videos with a more high frame, everything will look smooth and crisp. There will be no blurring on the edges either.
The higher refresh rate is cool for the device. Due to the Full HD AMOLED Display, you will get nice and crisp colors too. You can still change colors and settings to your liking. Therefore, customization is not limited. There’s also the HDR support in this device. So if you want to watch the HDR content, you have the option to watch it.
There’s an always-on display with a notification LED at the top.
Cons of the Display
Well, here’s the bad news. While the phone has a refresh rate of 120 Hz, most of our games do not support more than 60fps if we consider today’s standards. However, some games do support more than 60fps too. If we talk about brightness, it’s pretty nice too. It has 418 nits of brightness on the maximum settings. But the fun part is here. If you turn on automatic brightness mode, you’ll get a boost up to 620 nits of crazy light.
The camera of Asus ROG Phone 2
While the camera is not a focus of this phone, the cameras are still nice on the Asus ROG Phone 2. The camera is the same as on Asus Zenfone 6. You have a 48 Megapixel wide-angle shooter. Coupled with a 13 Megapixels ultra-wide camera, it’s a good camera too.
The photos from the main camera are plenty bright and look good in bright lighting conditions. The HDR is default turned on. Therefore, there will be nice processing of an image that you will get with this device. All images get plenty of details and sharpness.
The color is good too. The Ultra-wide camera is fine too. It takes fine shots. Nothing too good. The images are nice and the camera does get pretty bright too. The portrait mode is another thing that is cool.
Low Light Camera
The lowlight performance is also good. There is good detail to the image. However, there is noise and images look a little soft. There’s also a night mode that you can get in Asus ROG 2. And it also works well. It reduces noise while increasing the exposure in some areas that are soft or dark.
On the other hand, the ultra-wide camera suffers a lot from low lighting conditions. Moreover, if you turn on the night mode, you will definitely see some improvements though.
For videos, the main camera can shoot all the way up to 4K at a whopping 60 FPS. You also get Electronic image Stabilization in all of the modes. As expected, the video quality is great with a lot of detail and stabilization is good too. You don’t even have the overly sharped videos that we get on a lot of smartphones. However, the ultra-wide camera can only shoot up to 30fps at 4K.
Moving over to the camera, the front camera generates pretty well shots in daylight from its 24-megapixel selfie shooter. Colors, sharpness, and details are all good.
General Specs of the Device
There isn’t micro SD support or any sort of expandable storage support. However, the storage sizes they provide are awesome. You don’t need an SD card in 2019, I guess. You get the crazy store on the device.
Asus ROG Phone 2 comes with three storage sizes. The base one is 256GB, then 512GB and up to 1 Terabyte. How crazy is that?
You get an option for Face Unlock too. However, it’s not all that secure. It’s plenty fast and it works but it’s not secure like other devices such as the iPhone or Samsung’s latest smartphones.
There’s also a fingerprint reader under the screen. Which you can wake up and unlock the phone. Like all other in-screen fingerprint scanners, it works. It’s not the craziest fast or ultra-speedy fingerprint scanner but it’s fine.
Sound
Asus ROG Phone 2 has a great display. But what about the sound? Gaming is all about Responsiveness, Display, Sound, and Skills. In my personal opinion, this phone has one of the best smartphone speakers ever made. It has stereo speakers with two dedicated amplifiers.
Therefore, each speaker owns an amplifier of its own. The speakers are loud and impressive too. The sound quality and depth of the speakers is quite exceptional if we compare it to some of the best flagship devices as of now. Considering all these Aspects, Asus ROG Phone 2 is the most powerful smartphone in the world.
Now comes the best part. Asus decided to move on with the headphone jack so it’s still here. It contains a 3.5 mm headphone jack. Coupled with 24 DAC for high definition audio, this device is a straight beast.
Asus Accessories
Kunai Gamepad
There’s also a Kunai gamepad by Asus but you will have to buy it of course. I’d say that it’s bang for the buck. Coupled with gaming, it can take your gaming experience to a whole new level.
The gaming experience will become better and smoother by the use of the Kunai Gamepad. They are like Joycons that you see on the Nintendo switch. It has a left and right side. These two parts can be slide onto the special holder which can give console-like experience. It’s truly wireless!
There’s another shell case on which you can slide these pieces. Furthermore, you can put your phone into the case to make it an even better experience. Just like the Nintendo switch. However, you will have to link all the buttons to the controls to have it working. This can be a big hassle for people. It would be nicer if the device would automatically detect everything.
Here’s another good news. According to ASUS, you will be able to download the key-maps that will be shared by users. So, Asus is creating a beautiful gamer-friendly environment for gamers.
Arrow Fan
There are two USB ports too. One USB is at the bottom and one is on the side of the device. As expected from a gaming phone, the side one does support a USB 3.1 support. You can use it for multiple purposes. Asus has released its cooling fan which you can connect to the device to make it less warm. This is a great addition and it feels less gimmicky.
The fan comes with the device when you buy it. With the use of this Arrow fan, you will minimize the amount of heat that the phone will exert and it will keep the phone cool overall. Unlike last year’s fan, this one is better and quiet too!
Twin View Dock 2
Another accessory by ASUS for gamers is this Twin View Dock 2. The basic concept of having a twin view dock 2 has to do everything with the multitasking. It gives your device a secondary screen that you can use for gaming or even multitasking. It can be combined with the primary display to extend the capabilities.
At first glance, I really wanted to play Pokemon Diamond and Pearl due to it being similar to the Nintendo DS. However, if we talk about games, the support for multi-screen games is very limited.
This is enough for the accessories. Now let’s talk about the big deal. How does it hold against some real gaming?
Battery Life
With the humungous 6000 mAh battery, Asus has covered the battery problem that most gaming devices suffer from pretty well. The battery life is really good and when you put it to a 60 Hz standard display, it will go even further beyond.
One drawback of the Asus ROG Phone 2 is that it lacks the superfast charger like other devices. It has a hypercharge technology with a 30-watt charger. It gets fully charged under 1.3 hours. So it’s not all that bad. Asus itself claimed that they want to extend the lifetime of their battery.
Performance
It surprises us in terms of heavy gaming. It has the flagship chipset by Qualcomm which is the Qualcomm 855+ Chipset.
The 855+ is an overclocked version of what we call the Qualcomm 855 chipset. It was essential for gaming though. With Adreno 640 GPU and 7nm processor, gaming is not even a problem. Along with all these heavy specs, you have 12 Gigabyte of crazy ram.
In terms of benchmarks, it has scored good. Just like we can expect from any other flagship device. However, the onscreen benchmarking tests will give great results due to the 120Hz display.
Due to the better processor, GPU tests have a big boost as compared to some other smartphone devices.
The device doesn’t heat up all that much too. With the use of Arrow Fan, you can expect little to no heating issues. The performance wouldn’t change but holding the phone will feel a lot more comfortable than before. Therefore, the gaming experience is the best we’ve ever seen on a smartphone.
There is no lag or any kind of hiccups found on this phone. With or without the control, the device is pretty good.
Asus has implemented the ultra-sonic Air Triggers on the corner of the phone. For shooting games like PUBG or Fortnite, you can expect a lot more experience. Everything is pretty responsive too. You can even customize these triggers.
Software and UI
The Asus ROG Phone 2 works on Android Pie with the Asus Zen UI 6 as the skin on top of it. The whole theme of the phone looks ready to just blow everything. It as a nice wallpaper and theme. If you switch to high-performance mode, you will start to see that the wallpaper is glowing.
However, if you want that stock zen fone feel, you can still have that by simply switching the theme in settings.
In the device software, there are some really good battery saving options too. There’s also a gimmicky audio equalizer too. Well, it works. There’s a game menu available which is on the left corner if you swipe the screen.
It provides you a lot of gaming features. You can even have an info bar that tells you complete information about the CPU, GPU and RAM usage. Therefore, it’s a really nice tool for gaming. In addition, it even tells the battery level, temperature, and fps of the game that you’re playing.
There’s also an option to record the current screen too. So for live stream or recording, these tools are essential and awesome.
Release Date and Price
Asus has already released its ultra-gaming smartphone in Europe. Asus ROG 2 gaming phone has taken over the world by storm with its capabilities. With a perfect mix of hardware or software, gamers can really push beyond the limits of mobile gaming.
This can be really useful in competitive matches in eSports. It is expected that games like PUBG and Fortnite tournaments. With Razer in its competition, the results will be interesting. So when will it be released?
The Asus ROG phone 2 is expected to release in October or December in the US. The Fourth Quarter of 2019. Well, we are almost there. It is the most powerful smartphone for gaming, period. Therefore, you can expect a really heavy-duty performance with it.
The prices will be around $900 dollar which is not quite bad. Considering its awesome specs and power, this price is good. However, this was just the base model. If you will go all out for the 1 Terabyte model, then the prices can range from $1100 to $1500. We will get to know the truth once the phone arrives.
So, what’s the reason behind its popularity?
Why is ROG Phone so Popular?
The Asus ROG phone is mainly focused on gaming. While excel in gaming, it also provides some nice specifications too. The company sold more than 10,000 units of ROG phone in just 73 seconds in the first sale.
I guess gamers are just crazy about gaming. Aren’t they? Around $900 you have the chance to buy a gaming phone that is most powerful in the whole world. Who will not buy it? The processor is good for gaming. Coupled with the 12 GB of RAM, it’s awesome. Moreover, it has a great camera too.
The flexibility is endless. Having nice additional modules can extend the device’s capabilities which results in better overall gaming experience too. The camera is quite exceptional too. However, in that price range, it could be better.
The speakers are one of the best we’ve ever heard on a smartphone. Therefore, it’s a straight 10 in terms of speakers. Moreover, the massive battery of 6000 mAh takes everything on a whole other level.
Consuming media on a 1080p sharp and crisp AMOLED display with 120Hz display is what every gamer dreams of. Therefore, gaming or watching content, this phone is an absolute killer phone. It is also hailed as the most powerful device in the world.
With the ROG edition of Zen UI, you can expect a lot of features for gaming and other tools that you can either use to extend further capabilities of the device, or you can use them to monitor everything on the device.
Pros
- 6.59 inches FHD+ AMOLED Display
- 120 Hertz and HDR supported
- Less Response Time
- 7.1 Surround Sound dual speakers
- Snapdragon 855+ Chipset
- 12 GB of RAM
- Support for many additional functionalities
These are all the Pros that I found worth mentioning. However, there are some cons to this device too.
Cons
The first one is the camera. The sensor that was used on Asus ROG Phone 2 is a budget-oriented lens. The Sony IMX586. This lens is used in more of budget devices like some of Huawei’s new devices.
Another con is that it’s one of the heaviest smartphones on the market right now. Well, it’s understandable because of premium build quality and power it packs but still, it weighs 240 grams which is a lot for a smartphone.
Well, it comes with Zen UI so that’s debatable. Zen UI is not the brightest and good-looking UI out there. It gets the job done. It would’ve been better to see if they’d had added a dedicated skin on top of android or Asus ROG Phone 2. However, we are stuck with Zen UI which might not be for everyone.
I can’t even say that this device should’ve stock android, as it would look really weird. Stock android is always my preference but for gaming smartphones like these, they should have a more gaming-oriented UI on top of android.
Rating of the Device
This is time for my personal rating for this device. Please do not be offended as these are my own personal ratings. However, they should give you a slight idea of how the device is.
Power: 10/10
Performance: 10/10
Battery Life: 10/10
Camera: 7/10
Display: 7.5/10
Speaker: 10/10
User Interface: 10/10 for gaming and 6/10 for normal use.
Flexibility: 10/10
All in all, this device is one of my personal favorite devices. I can’t wait to get my actual hands on to the device. It’s a must recommended for gamers. Therefore, if you have a passion for gaming, this device is an absolute beast for you.
This was our review for the Asus ROG Phone 2. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them.