The ROG Phone is an Android gaming smartphone made by

Asus ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (, , , ; stylized as ASUSTeK or ASUS) is a Taiwanese Multinational corporation, multinational computer, phone hardware and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Beitou District, Taipei, Taiwan. Its products include deskto ...

and the first generation of the ROG smartphone series. It was announced on June 8, 2018 at the

Computex COMPUTEX Taipei, or Taipei International Information Technology Show (), is a computer expo held annually in Taipei, Taiwan. Since the early 2000s, it is one of the largest computer and technology trade shows in the world. The most recent COMP ...

computer expo, being the first Asus smartphone to be targeted mainly to gamers. It competes with the Razer Phone,

Xiaomi Xiaomi (; ) is a Chinese multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Beijing, China. It is best known for consumer electronics software electric vehicles. It is the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones in the worl ...

Black Shark, and ZTE Nubia Red Magic.

Specifications

Hardware

The ROG Phone has a metal chassis with a glass backplate. The back of the device features an RGB-illuminated logo (In X-Mode or Gaming Mode and also adjusted manually), which can be user-customised to show different colours, similar to the notification lights found in the mainstream smartphone market. The phone is equipped with a

Qualcomm Snapdragon Snapdragon is a suite of system-on-chip (SoC) semiconductor products for mobile devices designed and marketed by Qualcomm, who often refers to these SoCs as "mobile platforms". They typically integrate central processing units (CPU) based o ...

845 SoC with a 3 GHz + 1.7 GHz octa-core (4+4)

Kryo Qualcomm Kryo is a series of custom or semi-custom ARM-based CPUs included in the Snapdragon line of SoCs. These CPUs implement the ARM 64-bit instruction set and serve as the successor to the previous 32-bit Krait CPUs. It was first introduc ...

385 CPU and an

Adreno Adreno is a series of graphics processing unit (GPU) semiconductor intellectual property cores developed by Qualcomm and used in many of their SoCs. History Adreno is an integrated graphics processing unit (GPU) within Qualcomm's Snapdrago ...

630 GPU. The memory is 8 GB in size ( LPDDR4), the internal storage can be chosen to be either 128 GB or 512 GB UFS 2.1. The display is a 6.0-inch

AMOLED AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode; ) is a type of OLED display device technology. OLED describes a specific type of thin-film-display technology in which organic compounds form the electroluminescence, electroluminescent materi ...

, supported by a Corning Gorilla Glass 6 panel, with a 1080x2160 (402 ppi) resolution, a 1ms response time and a refresh rate of 90Hz. The

USB-C USB-C, or USB Type-C, is a 24-pin reversible Electrical connector, connector (not a Communication protocol, protocol) that supersedes previous USB hardware#Connectors, USB connectors (also supersedes Mini DisplayPort and Lightning (connector) ...

port and 3.5mm

audio jack A phone connector is a family of Cylinder, cylindrically-shaped electrical connectors primarily for Analog signal, analog audio signals. Invented in the late 19th century for Telephone switchboard, tele''phone'' switchboards, the phone conne ...

have been installed to the side of the device to allow a more comfortable gaming experience when using the device in landscape mode. It also features a 'vapor-chamber' cooling technology named GameCool which dissipates heat to keep the motherboard cool. The ROG Phone has IPX4 splash resistance and a custom double USB-C port which is used to connect the phone to its accessories.

Software

The phone OS is Android 8.1 Oreo with a modified Asus skin on top. The built-in sensors are a fingerprint scanner, an accelerometer, a gyroscope, and a barometer. Some areas of the edge are touch-sensitive and can be configured to mimic the additional keys found on traditional game controllers. The device also features a Nano SIM slot. The ROG phone features a so-called "X Mode", which optimizes gaming performance and restricts background apps.

Accessories

A line of unique gaming accessories were unveiled alongside the phone itself. The "AeroActive Cooler", which is attached to the back of the device, helps keeping the device cool by acting as an external cooling fan. The "TwinView Dock" is a handheld dock which provides a secondary screen for the device and the dock has a memory card slot that support SD cards up to 512GB, though mini or micro SD cards require a full-size SD adapter to fit into the slot. Other accessories include a mobile desktop dock, the Gamevice controller that gives the phone physical controls and a WiGig dock for wireless screen casting to TVs without built-in screen casting.

Reception

The Asus ROG Phone received positive reviews from critics. According to ''

Business Insider ''Business Insider'' (stylized in all caps: BUSINESS INSIDER; known from 2021 to 2023 as INSIDER) is a New York City–based multinational financial and business news website founded in 2007. Since 2015, a majority stake in ''Business Inside ...

'', the phone was a great success due to high-end specifications causing gamers to use it for playing ''

Mobile Legends ''Mobile Legends: Bang Bang'' (''MLBB'') is a mobile multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game developed and published by Chinese developer Moonton, a subsidiary of ByteDance. The game was released in 2016 and grew in popularity, most prominen ...

'' without lagging. It has gained some publicity for being the first smartphone with an external cooling fan.

References

{{Asus, computers=yes, tablets=yes, phones=yes, other1=yes, other2=yes, below=yes Asus smartphones Android (operating system) devices Mobile phones introduced in 2018 Mobile phones with multiple rear cameras Mobile phones with 4K video recording