The Asus ROG Phone 2 is probably the most powerful and feature-rich smartphone that
money can buy in 2019. It's technically a gaming smartphone ROG stands for Republic
of Gamers and Asus has been using the brand to deliver some pretty innovative stuff. Today
we're going to find out if it's durable.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
One of my favorite things about gaming smartphones is that they are typically a little less conservative
design-wise, and let themselves shine...literally, with built in LED lighting. I'll turn the
back LED logo on in just a second. The ROG 2 has a metal and glass back combo design
and has the same copper vent that we saw in last year's ROG 1. It looks pretty phenomenal
with it's multi-colored subtle holographic reflective accent lines that run throughout
the dark silver. Let's start with the scratch test.
The ROG 2 has a large 6.6 inch 1080p screen, and it's using the latest version of Gorilla
Glass – Gorilla Glass 6, which means that we shouldn't see any scratches at level 2
like we saw no the plastic inner screen of the Galaxy Fold. The ROG 2 scratches at a
level 6, with deeper grooves at a level 7.
Up here at the top of the phone we find a singular 24 megapixel front facing camera
tucked into the black bezel. The bezels are slightly larger on this beast due to the internal
front firing stereo speakers. They also double as a place to grip the phone while gaming
and in landscape mode. Last year's phone had orange-ish colored plastic stuff covering
the grill. And this year they've made it a bit more clean and got rid of the orange...which
I'm a fan of. The same thing goes for the secondary front facing stereo speaker grill
down at the bottom of the phone. It wouldn't be a durability test without finding out what
the phone is made from.
The ROG Phone has an anodized aluminum body. There is a SIM card tray down here. It's a
dual SIM but no SD card slot. Even though there is a 1 terabyte upgrade option for the
internal memory which is impressive, it still doesn't beat the inexpensiveness and easiness
of just adding an SD card down the road. There's not a rubber ring around the SD card port
which we haven't seen in a long time.
Moving up to the side of the phone, it contains a rubber plug. This keeps the accessory ports
and secondary charging port clean when it's not being used. The ROG 2 has 2 USB-C charging
ports. This side port can also output 4K video to a TV or computer monitor and can connect
to the external fan cooling units or other accessories. It's pretty cool to have options,
even if there is no advertised water resistance.
The top of the phone has more anodized black metal, and the right side of the phone has
the capacitive touch pad triggers on either end...just like we would see on a gaming controller.
It also has a metal volume rocker and metal power button. Those capacitive corner triggers
shouldn't affect durability, but we'll find out with the bend test in just a minute.
Finally, here at the bottom of the phone we get the USB-C port and we see our little buddy,
the headphone jack. I haven't seen one of these in a while. A lot of flagship and mid-range
phone manufacturers have been dropping the headphone jack so they can push their own
brand of wireless headphones that usually cost well over $150 or $200. It's important
to remember that there are a lot of good wireless headphones out there that cost a whole lot
less...which brings us to Raycon. Huge thanks to Raycon for sponsoring this video.
Raycon's totally wireless headphones are half the price of other premium wireless earbuds
and sound just as good. If anything, these are louder and have more base than any other
headphone I've tested recently. And I've tried out quite a few different headphones. I mostly
use my headphones at the gym or while running, and these are small enough and light enough
that I never feel like they're falling out. They have 6 hours of play time with an additional
24 hours of juice stored in the carrying case. You can get 15% off and check out the additional
colors with the link in the description. There's definitely no reason to pay big bucks to buy
headphones that are the same brand as your cell phone, especially when there are cheaper
and better options like these Raycons. I'll let you decide for yourself though. They have
free shipping and free returns. And thanks to Raycon for sponsoring this video.
Getting back to the back of the ROG 2. The main portion of the phone is covered with
that gray glass. The vibrant accent lines and hard camera angles help make this phone
look pretty unique. It's got a 48 megapixel main camera with a 13 megapixel ultra-wide
camera on the side. And there are also 2 different colored LEDs for the flash. When both colors
of the LEDs flash at the same time, it helps not to wash out the image as much. But the
thing that makes this phone physically stand out the most is the metal growth. Asus says
the upper copper portion has a vent that lets the heat escape out from inside the phone,
which is kind of true. We found out last year that the metal shell was mostly for aesthetics
and the copper coloring was also mostly just for looks. Nothing was really wicking heat
away from the processor. There were passive vents underneath the metal of course, but
no internal fans. And the actual heat pipe, the part that does keep the phone cooled most,
is on the screen side, not the back panel. So we'll see if that's the case when we tear
down this guy as well.
They did include a clear case in the normal retail box which is nice. It still leaves
a little gap for the copper cooling to show through. Let's get these LEDs turned on. Now
it might look like this RGB ROG logo isn't very luminous here on my desk, but that's
only because my desk lights are super bright. We can see the changing colors when they are
shadowed, but in a normal room this would be pretty easy to see. I'm definitely not
opposed to making it even brighter though. ROG is probably still using that little side-lit
deflection thing we saw in last year's phone. We'll have to check it out from the inside
of course, but the point is the 6,000 milliamp hour battery can probably handle a few extra
LEDs inside. And it would be pretty cool to see some more major lights, just like we would
see in a gaming PC. Either way this thing looks pretty cool.
The 6,000 milliamp hour battery is probably one of the best things about this phone, alongside
the 120 hertz 1080p OLED panel. For reference, most phones and monitors these days refresh
at 60 Hertz, so having a phone that can display these movies, games, scrolling, and images
twice as fast as usual is pretty interesting. It does last about 30 seconds under the flame
from my lighter which is also cool, or hot, depending on how you look at it. The screen
definitely did not recover though, so don't do this at home.
I almost forgot about the under screen fingerprint scanner. It's easy to tell that the ROG 2
is using an optical scanner. One, because the whole display brightens to max when it's
trying to sense my finger. And more importantly it has the green circle of light where my
finger is touching. The sensor underneath the display uses that green light to illuminate
the ridges on my fingerprint and then reads my fingerprint through those LEDs. It's pretty
cool. The under screen fingerprint technology wouldn't be possible on an LCD due to all
those layers we saw on my last video – just OLEDs. The good news is is that even with
these level 7 deeper grooves marring up the surface of the glass, the fingerprint reader
can still sense my finger and unlocks the phone every time.
Finally, the bend test. This thing is massively thick and heavy, which by default helps the
rigidity of the phone. But even with that thickness and weight, we still get a flex
near the side charging port. I guess having a hole in the frame weakens it a bit and allows
it to flex. But there are no permanent kinks or cracks in the metal, even when bent from
the front side. The ROG 2 is still a solid beast of a phone and quite possibly one of
the most feature-rich smartphones money can buy in 2019. It passes my durability test.
I'll toss a link for the current pricing of the ROG 2 down in the description below, next
to the Raycon headphones link. Remember you can get 15% off. To be honest, I got this
phone mostly so I could check out the insides. Hit that subscribe button if you're into that
kind of thing. And come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter. Would you ever buy
a gaming phone? Or maybe a better question: do you game very much on your current phone?
Let me know down in the comments. Thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.