The ROG Gaming Phone.
You're not supposed to judge a book only by it's cover.
The same thing applies towards smartphones.
Today we'll be taking apart one of the most unique looking metal and glass combination
smartphones and reviewing it from the inside.
This teardown has been sponsored by Audible.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
The ROG Gaming Phone from Asus is actually a pretty over-engineered and complex phone
to disassemble.
The oddly shaped back glass panel makes things a bit more complicated, but it looks pretty
awesome.
Heat is, as always, our best friend while softening adhesive.
And a little persuasion from my razor blade and metal pry tools can help quite a bit.
Heating up the glass when the adhesive cools down and gets hard, and then shimmying my
razor blade around the edges to slice through the sticky stuff.
The weird metallic growth on the side of the phone makes for some pretty awkward angles,
but I still managed to get the glass off in one piece.
Lifting the rear glass upwards as to not put any pressure on the fingerprint scanner ribbon.
It's a little Lego style connector that's hidden under a tiny rubber pad.
I'll unsnap that connector and release the back glass.
After dealing with so many boring rectangle phones, it's nice to see something different.
Asus is definitely pushing the aesthetic limits of this smartphone design.
It stands out for sure – especially with the transparent light-up logo.
Before we get any farther, we have 13 normal Phillips head screws holding in the back plastics,
11 of which are visible, and 2 of which are hidden under this...what should we call it...this
metal protrusion.
The thing is, it's not exactly metal, it's more of a thin shell about as thick as the
side walls of an aluminum pop can – meaning that it's really more for aesthetics than
anything else.
The three little black circles you see are vents leading directly down to the motherboard,
but the visible exterior copper portion is only for decoration.
I'll explain more in a second.
First, let's look at this white pad that fits underneath the transparent logo.
Remember I said the logo was really dim during the durability test?
That's because there is no back-lit lighting things up.
This is a piece of plastic.
So when light shines through it at an angle, like it did with my wall-mounted PC I built
a few years ago, it catches the logo in the plastic center and reflects out.
The 2 side LEDs shine at different angles to illuminate the whole piece of plastic.
It works, but it's still a far less bright method than the back-lit LED like we saw inside
the Razer Phone 2.
Let's take another look at the mid-plate.
The underside of the black plastic is hiding a pretty massive slab of solid copper.
It's not a vapor chamber.
Nor is it connected with the motherboard with any kind of thermal paste, but it is here,
existing.
And weirdly enough, surrounds the entirety of the circular vibrator motor.
You know, just in case that overheats.
The copper slab has nothing to do with the copper looking vents on the outside of the
phone though.
The thin copper vent things on the outside are just for decoration.
There is a layer of plastic between the slab of copper and the outer copper vents.
They're not connected.
You might be thinking to yourself, 'Hey Jerry, did you just break the whole phone?'
And nope, I did not.
The phone actually works just fine even without the copper plate or decorative exterior metal.
I mean, look at how good this Audible app is opening right now.
See what I did there?
Huge thanks to Audible for sponsoring this teardown.
The book I'm currently listening to is called Ender's Game.
It's a best selling classic about leadership while fighting space aliens...you know...the
good stuff.
Normal narration always seems a bit slow, so I bump it up a tiny bit and listen to Audible
while I'm driving or running outside.
Audible has something new called Originals.
Originals are content that's only found on Audible.
You can get your first audio book for free when you try audible for 30 days.
Visit audible.com/jerryrig or text the word “jerryrig” to 500-500.
You get to keep your free book even if you decide to cancel.
Audible is an app I use quite a bit, so I'm glad I get to share it with you guys.
I'll get the phone turned back off.
You know, safety first.
We still have a lot of things to check out.
I'll unplug the battery and then find 3 silver Phillips head screws holding the rather massive
motherboard in place.
The board wraps around the entire edge of the phone.
I'll pop out the dual SIM card tray, and then start unclipping the little ribbon cables.
I found 8 of them before removing the large black sticker over the battery.
Unclipping that last ribbon cable for the screen and then the whole motherboard was
able to lift up and away from the phone body.
One tiny dollop of silver thermal paste connects the processor to the copper pad on the frame
below.
Supposedly this copper pad is connected to a vapor chamber, but it's hidden below the
rest of the frame or sandwiched under the screen.
So there's no way of telling how big it is.
The 2 side USB-C ports are builtin to the motherboard.
These are for connecting all the additional accessories like the external fan.
The rear facing camera is uncharacteristically secured to the frame of the phone with 3 screws.
Asus is rocking a 12 megapixel main lens with optical image stabilization.
Thumbs up for that.
And an 8 megapixel secondary wide-angle camera that fan fit more scenery into a shot but
does not have optical image stabilization.
The front facing camera is an 8 megapixel little guy with no OIS.
Fun fact though: the optical image stabilization is done with little magnets inside the camera's
metal housing.
You can see how it attracts my screw as I try putting it back together.
The bottom of the phone has one silver screw holding the loudspeaker in place.
It projects the sound forward and out of the front facing speaker grille.
It's got the gold contact pads on the back that communicate with the motherboard.
We also have a headphone jack with a super long ribbon cable tail that reaches underneath
the loudspeaker over to the motherboard.
The charging port is a cute little guy.
The USB-C with a rubber water resistant ring around the outside.
The ROG Phone has no official IP rating, but it's nice to see some steps were taken towards
keeping water out.
The little coin style vibrator motor is tucked in here next to the gold battery, which looks
like it has some pull tabs down at the bottom.
But they do break at first pull, and they are also unsatisfyingly silent during the
removal process.
The second pull tab snapped off...twice...resulting in a Pry of Shame to remove the rest of the
battery.
It's a rather large 4,000 milliamp hours.
We also get to see the ribbon cables for the air triggers on the side of the phone.
Asus says there's still a vapor chamber hidden in here somewhere, but it's impossible to
see without sacrificing the phone entirely.
I try to keep my phones in one piece.
If it does exist, it's glued between the screen and the underside of the frame, which also
means it's probably nothing in comparison to the size of the Razer Phone 2's water bed
style vapor chamber.
I got the headphone jack, the loudspeaker and charging port all situated back into the
frame.
Then comes the motherboard with it's blue wire cable.
The tricky part with a circuit board this big is lining up all the ribbon cables so
they don't get pinched underneath the board when I set it in place.
There are a lot of ribbon cables to plug back in, including the battery.
The little LED ribbon plug that lights up the back logo is a bit different.
That guy plugs in and gets latched down with a little plastic lever and some tape on top
to secure it.
Then the whole back plastic panel can plop in place with it's decorative copper.
The thin plastic strip to the left of the battery tucks between the buttons and the
battery itself to provide something for the power button to push against.
I'll get the 13 screws back into place, get the fingerprint scanner plugged in, and the
white plastic LED reflector positioned back in front of the LEDs.
And now it's time to see if the ROG Phone can handle being dissected and reassembled.
I imagine a teardown is rather stressful for these pocket computers.
Totally nailed it with that back metal cover.
You can hardly tell the phone's been opened up.
Everything still works, even the accessories.
Not too bad.
The ROG Gaming Phone is a feature-rich device, with all kinds of interesting perks and quirks.
I'm glad we got to review it from the inside.
It's a good one.
Don't forget to grab your free audio book with the link in the description.
Audible.com/jerryrig or text the word “jerryrig” to 500-500.
j-e-r-r-y-r-i-g all lowercase.
I recommend Ender's Game.
Now that you've seen the insides of both gaming phones, which one do you prefer?
The Razer Phone 2, or the ROG?
Thanks a ton for watching.
I'll see you around.