Mobile gaming has come a long way since the likes of Angry Birds and Candy Crush. Thanks to modern mobile chipsets that offer impressive power, mobile gaming is reaching new heights. The fact that console and PC games like PUBG and Fortnite now have a mobile version is testament to that.
Asus’ Republic of Gamers or ROG brand is pretty well known for its gaming hardware. At Computex, the brand announced that it was making its way to mobile gaming with the launch of the ROG Phone. Here’s a quick look at what the phone has to offer.
Display
Starting with the screen, the ROG Phone sports a large 6-inch AMOLED HDR display. The company says that the display offers a 90Hz refresh rate and a response time of 1ms. It also said to offer a 108.6% DCI-P3 colour gamut with a contrast ratio of 10,000:1.
Hardware
At the heart of the ROG phone is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, which sports an Adreno 630 GPU. For memory, the phone offers 8GB RAM, along with 512GB of storage.
AeroActive Cooler
To ensure that the phone remains cool when gaming for extended periods, Asus that provided an external cooler called the AeroActive cooler. This attaches to the ROG Phone and helps to keep things cool.
Game Center
The phone comes comes with a feature called Game Center. This lets users set the fan speed as per their requirements. There is also a specialised mode called X Mode, aims to improve the user’s gaming experience. It frees up background RAM, optimises game-data processing performance, and maximises the efficiency of the AeroActive Cooler.
Side mounted ports
Instead of placing the ports on the top or bottom of the phone, Asus has placed the ports on the side of the ROG Phone. The idea being that this would allow users to play games unhindered, even when charging the device. The USB Type-C port supports HDMI output, gigabit LAN, and headphones. When the AeroActive module is plugged, it offers a side-mounted USB Type-C port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The slot is also used by the Mobile Desktop Dock and TwinView Dock.
UltraSonic AirTriggers
In lieu of the lack of physical buttons on mobile phones. The ROG Phone sports three ultrasonic AirTrigger touch sensors. Two of these sensors are optimized as left/right triggers at the top of the display for landscape-mode gaming, while the third is designed for use in portrait mode, These sensors are fully programmable and lets mobile games make use of fingers other than their thumbs. Besides this, the phone also comes with a haptic actuator, that provides a force-feedback system to gamers.
Audio
The ROG Phone features front-facing stereo speakers which the company claims to maximise volume and minimise distortion. The audio engine on the phone supports 24-bit/192Khz Hi-Res Audio playback. The device also supports DTS Headphones: X for improved audio when using headphones. It also supports high-definition audio via Bluetooth.
Battery
The ROG Phone sports a 4000mAh battery and comes bundled with a power adapter that supports Asus HyperCharge technology. This direct-charge technology delivers upto 20W of power.
TwinView Dock
The TwinView Dock offers games a dual-screen experience with the phone. The dock sports a secondary 6-inch display, and sports a front-facing quad speaker system as well as two extra physical trigger buttons. Other features of the dock includes a dual-haptic force-feedback engine, a cooling system as well as a 6000mAh extended battery pack.
Mobile Desktop Dock
The Mobile Desktop Dock for the ROG Phone allows users to hook the device up to an external monitor, mouse and keyboard. The Phone itself can be used an auxiliary display which being connected to a wired gigabit LAN and support a 5.1-channel audio system.
Gamevice controller
The Gamevice controller packs a number of physical gaming controls, making the gaming experience more natural. It packs dual analog joysticks, left/right triggers and bumpers, a D-pad along with A,B,X,Y and L3/R3 buttons.
Aura RGB lighting
Since this is a gaming device, the ROG Phone needs to look the part. The phone sports striking design with angular lines. Of course, no gaming device is complete without RGB lighting. It also comes with Asus’ Aura RGB lighting, that features an illuminated rear ROG logo. This logo can display a number of lighting schemes such as static, breathing, strobing or color cycling. These schemes can be triggers with phone events like incoming calls, notifications and so forth.