Asus ROG Phone

This is ASUS's gaming phone, the Republic of Gamers (ROG) Phone. Its pretty good to see smartphone manufacturers making gaming phones on the footprints of last years Razor Phone.

ASUS ROG Phone:

Display: 6.0 inch OLED display with a resolution of 1080*2160 (18:9) and (~402 ppi).
Chip-set: Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 with Adreno 630 GPU.
Variants: 128/256 GB along with 8 GB RAM.
OS: Android 8.1 (Oreo).
Cameras: Dual 12 MP (f/1.8, 1/2.55", 24 mm, 1.4 micro metre, 4 axis OIS, dual pixel PDAF) and 8 MP (12 mm, no AF) rear cameras and 8 MP (f/2.0, 24 mm) front camera.
Battery: 4000 mAh.
Price: ~59990 Rupee.

Design: Where every phones look the same now with same notched display and minimal look, this phone stands apart. The phone is huge, thick (~9 mm) and heavy as well. The back gives a titanium look to the phone and has a rainbow shine while hold in an angle. The camera, flash cut outs and the line in the back of the phone gives it a geometrical look. The fingerprint sensor is quite wide shaped. There is a copper heat spreader as well on the right side phone the back of the phone when looking from back. In the middle of the back there is the ROG logo. There is two extra USB C ports on the left side of the phone to charge accessories along with the regular USB C port at the bottom for charging. Overall the phone does look like a gaming one.

Display: The display comes with a refresh rate of 90 Hz and 1 millisecond of response time which is first in the world for an OLED panel. But basically the panel is not that great. The phone does feel speedy with that refresh rate and response time but the brightness is not that high or low, colours are not that vibrant and there is a tone of magenta colour all over the display when you look attentively. But this is expected to be improved in the next generations of high refresh rate OLED panels.

Camera: Do you really care about the camera in a gaming phone? But the cameras are decent, don't worry. Asus tried a regular lens with a wide angle one on the back which not many smartphone manufacturers doing now a days. I think the main focus should be on the front camera as gamers will get live while playing their games.

Special Features:

1. The phone got Face Unlock.
2. There is fingerprint gestures. You can open or close the notification bar by swiping down or up accordingly.
3. The front facing speakers get independently amplified and they sound massive. There is also a outdoor mode which amplifies the vocals so that its lot easier to listen.
4. There is motion controls as well. So you can double tap to wake up or sleep the phone, flip over to mute and lift up to automatically answer phone calls. And there are gestures which you can draw in the lock screen to open certain apps. Like draw a C to open up camera.
5. There is Zen emojies.
6. There is some AI features like suggesting the most useful apps in certain times, AI charging to protect the battery and others.
7. The sides of the phone is pressure sensitive like the HTC U11+ or Google Pixel 2. There are actions based on short squeeze or a long squeeze. There are air triggers which are the squeezable parts of the phone at sides which act as two extra buttons. The air triggers can be mapped to represent any portion of the screen. So, you can play games without blocking the screen with your fingers and with more comfort.
8. There is also a feature called game gene which opens up when a game is opened and helps to map air triggers, stream live video, closes all background processes to free up the RAM and lot more. Good job Asus.
9. When you squeeze the phone for a long time it opens the gaming mode called the X mode. It clocks up the CPU a bit, closes all the unnecessary processes running on background, turns on the HDR mode on 90 Hz display and turns on the light of the logo in the back of the phone which is really a gamers dream feature.

10. There is a small ecosystem of accessories for the phone as well which you can plug in into the extra two USB C ports. Like the fan that comes with the box with its own glowing logo which keeps the phone extra cool while gaming and you can also control the fan speed in the app.

So what do you think about these specific purpose focused phones? Will we see some photography focused phone or something else in the future? Let me know in the comment section below.