(upbeat music)
- What can I say?
Gaming phones have come a long way
since they first started coming out a few years ago.
Not just because there's more gaming phones
and that's more competition,
but also just because regular flagship phones now
have insane hardware too.
But still at the top of the heap for gaming phones
sits this guy the Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate.
Let's just start with just the numbers.
Numbers on paper.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 at 3.2 gigahertz
with the Adreno 740 GPU.
16 gigs of LPDDR5X RAM,
Half a terabyte of UFS 4.0 storage,
a 6.78 inch 1080P AMOLED display at 165 hertz
up to 1,200 nits.
A 6,000 million power battery with 65 watt charging
and two USB-C ports plus the headphone jack.
Kind of sounds like it has everything 'cause it nearly does
but I actually do wanna start
with the one thing that it doesn't have
which is a world class camera system.
But the thing is, I mean that's probably fine.
It is a gaming phone after all.
Now obviously, it's still expensive
so you don't wanna feel like you're getting a bad camera.
But let's be real, the camera is not the priority
in these phones or for the people buying these phones.
So I mean, really the objectives to give you
a good enough camera system that you're not mad
but it's not gonna be a good enough camera
that you're out bragging about it.
So this is a 50 megapixel primary camera that bends
to 12.5 megapixels and can do that lossless 2x zoom.
And then there is a 13 megapixel ultra wide
and that third camera is a five megapixel macro.
So not a telephoto.
It's all fine, right?
It's a pretty classic daylight shots
decent lighting is fine
and then as soon as the lighting conditions deteriorates,
so do the photos and videos,
you get a lot of noise pretty quickly.
I still gotta give props to ASUS for doing
a pretty great job with HDR though and getting
a good amount of detail out of most normal shots.
And they've actually even added some pretty clever features
to their default camera app.
And I don't think of ASUS phones usually
as like the best cameras ever, but there's the pro
photo and video modes that are getting you
a few new features to play with that are just fun to use.
So combined with the 32 megapixel selfie camera,
I feel like I can confidently give t
his whole camera suite like a B.
It's definitely not bad,
it's just, it's not why you buy this phone.
I mean, if you're looking for the reason you buy this phone,
look no further than the design
because that says everything you need to know.
This is the phantom white finish on the back here still.
This year, it's a combination of satin white
and I guess a different satin white, maybe matte white.
But it still has the text everywhere.
ROG, 07, Republic of Gamers, 206, 8K Ultra HD.
The ultimate version still has this display on the back
which you can't even see while you're using the phone
but it will display to the people around you
either in animation or some information
in a scrolling banner or when it's face down and charging,
you can see your percentage, things like that.
You can't have too big of a camera.
Like you have these gigantic camera rings now
and a lot of these flagship phones,
you can't do that on this phone
because it's supposed to be perfectly balanced
for when you're gaming and holding it in landscape mode.
And so that's why you have that split battery design.
3,000 million powers over here,
,3000 more million power over here
and actually, the motherboard is in the middle
which is a pretty clever design.
And so now, it's perfectly balanced as all things should be.
Now, like I said, gaming phone
So we have these awesome flagship phones,
S23 Ultra, Oppo Find X6 Pro.
They also have incredible numbers and specs
but this one separates itself by leaning a little bit more
towards gaming and media and that experience.
Not that those aren't good at gaming and media,
but well, gaming is media.
So the things that this does to be good at gaming
are great at that.
And watching videos and just scrolling around
using a phone like normal.
So that's why you end up with not just 120 hertz LTPO,
but a Samsung built flat 165 hertz OLED
with a 720 hertz touch sample rate
and a 23 millisecond touch latency.
It's once again, the most responsive
and smoothest display I've ever used in a phone.
My eye can actually tell the difference
between this and 120 hertz display
in a lot of the other flagships out right now,
which is awesome.
So that's of course, gonna be great for gaming
getting every single last frame
out of the games that actually support that.
But also, that's pretty nice for just scrolling around
and flipping through apps and social media too.
The split battery setup they've got going on,
they've been doing that for a couple years too.
3,000 plus 3,000 is a 6,000 million power battery
and that actually allows them
to fast charge them in parallel.
So you get 65 watts going into the phone.
It'll charge from zero to 100 in like 45 minutes
which is already 10 minutes faster than last year's phone.
And they even have this graphic that they sent me
showing the standard batteries need a thin separator.
While fast charging batteries need a thicker separator
'cause they push more current
and it's just safer to do it this way.
Sounds like this would be a trade off
that you have to think really hard about in any other phone.
Except it doesn't matter in this phone
because the whole phone is thick.
It's thick enough to handle a gigantic battery
and fast charging.
I mean, that's at least three Cs.
Plus there's a whole suite of battery management features
that make this thing last forever.
I mean it's already a battery champ
easily pulling seven hours of screen on time at 165 hertz.
But there's also scheduled charging,
there's also study charging,
so it doesn't fast charge every time you plug it in
if you don't want it to.
There's also custom charging limits.
There's also pass through charging.
There is no wireless charging
but there are two USB-C ports as I mentioned.
one on the bottom and one on the side.
No, it doesn't charge twice as fast
if you plug in both at the same time.
I tried.
That's still the Legion Phone Duel's little trick.
But interestingly, the side USB port
is actually considered the primary one.
That's the faster USB 3.1 data speeds.
So either way, if you plug in you can get the fast charging
but if you wanna plug in any accessories
or anything like that,
that will go into that side port here.
But speaking of accessories,
this is probably all you need to know about
how ridiculous this phone is and who it's targeted for.
So this thing.
this is the AeroActive Cooler 7.
So this is a clip on, plug in
active cooling accessory that you plug into
and connect to the back
of the phone that has a heat sink, fan, RGB lights inside.
And this little, this black tab
on the side of this ROG phone is actually an opening.
It motorize and opens up.
So you clamp on this cooler
over the side of the phone just like this,
plug it in by the USB on the side
and the fan starts spinning up and then this black
lift gate over here on the side of the phone opens up
to allow active airflow through the side of the phone.
It's opening up the phone and spinning in that cool air.
So when you're gaming, this will help bring down
the back cover surface by as much
as 20 to 25 degrees Celsius according to ASUS Labs.
But there's also like,
there's four trigger buttons back here.
There's RGB lights that change
and breathe depending on what you're doing.
And there's a whole subwoofer
for enhanced base and it actually works.
(lively music)
There is a genuine improvement
in the sound quality when listening to it
with the subwoofer on the back
of the phone and the front-facing speakers combined.
You never expect these things to be as good as they are.
But just the whole thing, just this whole dedication
to building something that is going to take a few degrees
off your phone and give you a couple extra frames,
their dedication to that gamer, is impressive.
It literally opens up the back of the phone.
And by the way, you can take this off and it closes
that port on the back and it's still IP54 water resistant
when it's closed.
This one feels like a sports car where a lot
of the ridiculous specialized tech is completely unnecessary
to most people, but it'll eventually trickle down
into everyday cars.
Like most regular cars/phones
don't need this crazy moving part and active aerodynamics.
They don't need extra RAM and extra power.
But eventually, regular flagship phones
in a few years will have all of this power
and all of this cooling and all the capabilities
of this phone.
They'll just be normal phones.
So make sure you subscribe to see the reviews
of those phones when they come out.
But for now, this is still gonna separate itself as a phone
for the gamer especially just because of the way it's built.
Obviously it's thicker than a normal phone,
but they still have things like bezels on the front
for your thumbs and the front-facing speakers
so you can hold it like this
and have a place when you're gaming to rest your fingers.
That's something most phones aren't going to do anymore.
The extra port of course
and the compatibility with the crazy accessories,
and just their willingness
to just use basic off-the-shelf parts
for the things that don't really matter so much.
Like sure, this optical fingerprint reader, it's fine.
It's totally normal.
The cameras as well, like I said,
you don't get a telephoto camera, you just get
like an off-the-shelf B plus, B camera system.
Fine.
But when it comes
to anything that a gamer could possibly want
to get that last one or two FPS, to get that last second
off of your lap time or that last kill
or to be able to have that little bit of an advantage,
they'll throw the kitchen sink at it.
They'll do all the software features
in the world and hardware stuff to make that happen.
And I respect that.
There's no way I could go through all those things
in this single video, but I respect that a lot.
Here are some of my personal favorites.
There is a new vapor chamber cooling system
inside of this phone that you'll never see
but the new Y shaped width columns
with larger radio give 168% improvement
to thermal efficiency according to ASUS testing.
The custom mapable air triggers built
into the top corners of this phone have improved
for better sensitivity and they can be custom mapped
for all kinds of stuff, even outside of games.
And this phone has wifi 6E and wifi 7 support
even though none of our routers really do yet.
This is a really impressive purpose-built machine
through and through.
I'm glad they made it.
And yeah, gaming phones of today walk
so that flagships of tomorrow can run.
Thanks for watching.
Catch you guys to the next one.
Peace.
(upbeat music)