this is the ROG Phone 3 the ultimate
gaming smartphone now if you've been following the smartphone market closely
you're most likely aware of some of the changes that ROG has done
from the first generation of the ROG phone series to the second generation
rog phone just to give you a quick breakdown they've made the display
faster from 90 hertz to 120 hertz the cpu was updated to the fastest
available at the time the memory got a bump from 8 to 12
gigabytes the battery size it went from 4 000 milliamp hours to 6
000 milliamp hours the camera system got a bit of an
upgrade as well from 12 megapixels to 48 megapixels
and pricing for the ROG Phone 2 was around 900
which was actually pretty good considering what you were getting and
now we're here in 2020 with the ROG Phone 3 and just after taking a
quick glance at the specs and some of the features that asus has
improved on this phone i got to be honest this is
by far the coolest most unique looking
smartphone that i've personally come across
so let's check out what's new let's find out what's new about the ROG Phone 3
right after this what does it take to experience a
compact high performance gaming notebook you want specs that can meet the most
demanding tasks like a fast cpu up to 32 gigabytes of
ram ultra fast nvme ssd and rtx graphics
you also want something that's lightweight and easy to carry around
how about a robust optical mechanical keyboard with perky rgb lighting
and a fast 144hz ips display this is a new xpg xenia gaming notebook
check it out at the links below and game to the extreme
okay so i'm gonna kick things off with pricing for the rog phone three
now i'm not exactly sure what the official pricing is for the united
states but i am aware that they're gonna be three variants
of this phone starting with the strix edition that starts at 800 euros
and there is a regular standard model that comes with 12 gigs of ram
and 5 12 gigs of storage which is around a thousand euros and the sample that i
have over here comes with everything that you can
possibly throw at it now taking a look at the rest of specs this
is again an area where asus do everything they possibly can to create a
spec monster so you're getting the snapdragon 865
plus soc with 5g compatibility up to 16 gigabytes of lpddr5 ram
half a terabyte of ufs 3.1 storage dual sim support
a 6 000 milliamp hour battery which is the same size as the rg phone 2. so
nothing has changed there so the first thing that stood out to me just after
unboxing this phone is the design i mean it's obvious it's a
gaming smartphone made by ROG if you look at their notebook lineup
their peripherals their graphics cards they're a class of their own and this
phone sort of follows that trend you get an rgb logo at the back that's
customizable through software there's also an aura rgb led right
around the camera that shines a bright light
when you install the lightning bumper case it gives you a matrix led layout
that's pretty subtle but you can also customize the colors to software which
is pretty cool you see this isn't your traditional
flagship smartphone with a clean glass back and edge to edge
display this is really designed to be practical
for gamers and i'll talk about that a little bit later in the video
as for size this is a big phone in fact it's bigger than my oneplus 8 pro which
is already way too big for my hands personally so you might have to get used
to this form factor even if you have larger hands
now if you take a closer look at the ROG phone 3 and compared to the ROG Phone 2
not a lot has changed from a physical standpoint
the display still expands around 6.6 inches it's 1080p
plus amoled hdr 10 plus certified just like the rog phone 2.
however they did bump up the refresh rate from 120 hertz
to 144 hertz it's also got a 270 hertz touch sampling rate
the brightness levels have been improved as well and asus also claims that
they've improved the color accuracy on this phone
they say that it covers 113 dc ip3 but out of the box i did notice that it
exhibits cooler tones compared to my oneplus 8 pro
there are different profiles that you can play around through settings and i
ended up going with the standard one because the colors looked neutral to my
eyes now you can change the color temperature
and saturation levels to your preference and honestly i have no complaints with
it so far but let's take a moment and talk about that
sweet buttery smooth 144 hertz refresh rate because
switching from a oneplus 8 pro that features a 120 hertz display
i personally didn't notice a huge difference switching to the ROG Phone 3
but this is still a very fast display and when you can find games that can
support a high refresh rate the experience is
just unreal guys as you all know i'm into racing games
and i've been playing need for speed no limits recently
and it just delivers a smooth experience not to mention with that incredibly fast
touch sampling rate every touch based input is noticeably
faster than my oneplus 8 pro i mean here's a slow-motion comparison
between the two and you can tell that the display responds even with the
slightest movement of my finger it's just a beautiful combination of
hardware and software and let's not forget that this still features a flat
display so you're not getting any curves around the edges
thank you so much asus for keeping it that way and you're also getting an
in-display fingerprint sensor which works pretty well it's relatively
as fast as the oneplus 8 pro so i have no complaints
in that area now given the gaming brand attached to the smartphone there are
some features that they've improved from the rog phone too so when you're holding
the phone in landscape mode where the volume and power buttons are located
there are two invisible ultrasonic buttons asus
is calling this the air trigger 3 technology basically you can remap your
touch inputs on the display within a gameplay to
those individual buttons through game genie which is an overlay
that pops up when you enter a game so that way you don't have to use your
thumbs to interact with the game your two index fingers would do the job
and those individual buttons come with haptic feedback as well which is really
nice now with this generation of the ROG
phone series asus has added support for sliding swiping and creating
two partitions per button resulting in a four
shoulder trigger configuration now i'm not a hardcore gamer like a lot of you
out there but having played some racing titles and
some other games i'm actually really enjoying using these air triggers
because then i don't have to worry about using my thumbs
i can focus a little bit more on my gameplay and
these sort of features make a lot more sense for a gaming smartphone because
they are very useful and i'm sure if you're a
hardcore mobile gamer you'll definitely find
these useful the side mounted ports are one of the signature features of the rog
phone series because you can simply plug in
the charging cable while gaming in landscape mode so that doesn't get in
the way unlike your standard smartphone charging
orientation this port also acts as a hub for a variety of gaming accessories that
asus will be offering like a game pad a twin view dock and a
mobile docking station that gives you access to a bunch of usb
ports land jack display ports and an sd card slot i mean asus is
pushing the limits of what a smartphone can achieve and actually a level beyond
that so that to me is awesome oh and i should
also mention that in the box you get this aeroactive cooler
which again uses the side mounted ports to attach the phone
it has an active fan that is designed to lower the surface temperatures on the
device by four degrees while boosting clock
speeds on the cpu as well it also has a usb type-c pass-through port
and a 3.5 mm audio jack which i think is important because as you can probably
hear these fans they do get loud so you don't
want your teammates listening to that versus your
actual vocals and the other thing i want to mention
is that this does come with a king stance so it'll be nice
it's a nice little handy feature for watching movies speaking of which
this phone has two front-facing speakers and they sound
absolutely amazing it's by far the best sounding speakers
that i've listened to from a smartphone and when you pair that with something
like this you've got yourself like a really nice
portable movie theater or home theater uh i think
i'm definitely gonna take advantage of this setup because it really is
pretty awesome unfortunately they did remove the headphone jack on the
smartphone and i'm sure a lot of gamers might be a little disappointed with that
illumination because this is a gaming smartphone after all and a lot of you
most likely end up using headsets uh to use this phone without any
accessories installed it just doesn't make any sense because
the ROG Phone 2 had it why would they eliminate something like this i mean
asus has designed this to be a gaming smartphone
but they decided to eliminate one of the most crucial
elements that people or gamers value keep in mind that this phone still
doesn't have support for wireless charging
and it also doesn't have an official ip rating so
that all sort of makes sense because when you take a look at the internal
components of the smartphone asus has packed it
with layers of enhanced cooling to make sure that the soc's
clock speeds stay stable during longer gaming sessions because this
thing has like an actual air vent at the bottom or the top and
you've got these two side ports as well so
i guess these are all some of the factors to consider which is totally
understandable now after running some synthetic benchmarks and comparing it to
my oneplus 8 pro the ROG Phone was faster and it made
sense because you know they've packed so much inside the smartphone
that you're ultimately looking for the best performance in terms of
frame rates and things like that so that's something that you value
then this is the way to go i mean they've really nailed it in that
apartment this phone does support 30 watt fast charging but given how massive
the battery is asus has implemented a few battery care
options to extend its lifespan so in this menu you can enable slow
charging limited to 10 watts and you can also set
the charging limit for less battery wear over time you can also
schedule charging which is a nifty little feature
now i've only spent a couple of days with the rog phone three so i can't give
you guys a full verdict on my experience with battery life on this device
but i have spoken to some of my friends in the tech community who've been using
this device for a lot longer than i have and they've
been getting close to six and a half hours and nine and a half hours of
screen on time depending on their use case scenarios so that is
awesome and i mean for the specs of this thing
packs i'd say that's pretty amazing the software experience for the most part is
very close to what you get with a pixel and oneplus device
asus has not loaded this thing with any bloatware applications
except for armory crate which is the performance tuning app for the phone
in fact when you're setting up the device they'll give users the option to
choose between a gamery style theme or a classic stock look which is what i
prefer they have a dedicated theme store if you want to expand your options you
can also customize a few things within the ui
like changing the system navigation style to either gesture based
or the classic circle round and square buttons
the armory crate software is like a game portal where you can choose what
performance modes you'd like to enable within certain games
as you can see there is a game library where i can launch a game or
i can go into scenario profiles and fine-tune different factors
that affect the gameplay experience like touch sensitivity
refresh rate performance network air trigger customizations
key mapping macros there's just so much you can explore and then if i switch
over to the console tab this is where i can enable
x mode which overclocks the cpu and lets it stay consistently at
higher clock speeds keep in mind that enabling x mode
can affect battery life you can also adjust the fan speed of the aero active
cooler uh system lighting and that's pretty
much it now i'm not really sure what software support is going to be like for
the smartphone in the next two to three years because
when you look at the ROG Phone 2 that phone just recently got the update
to android 10 so it's definitely not going to be first
in line to receive the best that google has to offer
so that's something to keep in mind last but not least let's talk about the
cameras asus has updated their main camera with
sony's new imax 686 sensor now don't confuse that with
the imx 689 sensor found on the oneplus 8 pro
the sensors do fall into the same category but they feature different
characteristics you also get a 13 megapixel ultra wide angle camera
and a 5 megapixel macro camera let's start with the ultra wide
it does a pretty good job with dynamic range and exposure interestingly enough
when i compared it to my oneplus 8 pro i noticed that the rog phone captured
true life colors and it just gets white balance right
there's good detail as well and it doesn't
really crush the shadows that much so that's awesome
switching to the main camera you'll notice that the rog phone struggles to
maintain dynamic range even with hdr processing enabled these
guys do get a bit overexposed compared to the oneplus 8 pro
i also noticed that this phone tends to produce contrasty images by crushing the
shadows a bit but to be honest i kind of like that
look versus z8 pro again these are all subjective so you
may end up liking one or the other but i'd like to know what you think in
the comments lower performance is actually pretty good as well on this
phone and i'm surprised at how well it was able to keep up
with the oneplus 8 pro the detail is present colors don't get washed out
if i'm nitpicking i'd say that it does fiddle around with white balance here
and there but overall it's actually a really good
system the 24 megapixel selfie camera is great
it surprisingly captures my skin tones accurately along with yielding excellent
dynamic range it does soften my skin a little bit but
overall i'm really happy with the results so
this is the front-facing camera test on the rog phone 3.
now this phone can shoot up to 8k at 30 frames per second
but you do lose hdr and image stabilization
uh but you can also shoot at 4k up to 120 frames per second which is awesome
that is actually something that i've never seen from a smartphone camera
which is great uh but yeah it's loaded with video
features and the sample the footage looks really
really good i love the dynamic range coming out of the sensor
also this is a great test for the microphone quality as well i
i think i'm really happy with the white balance
or i guess the color signs coming out of the sensor in general i think asus has
really done a great job for i guess a gaming smartphone so let
me know what you guys think about it in the comments so there you guys have
it everything that you need to know about the ROG
Phone 3. you see this phone gives me a completely different vibe and
that's because this isn't your average flagship smartphone that you'd walk into
a carrier store and just buy right away it's a class of its own and that's
essentially delivering the fastest most powerful android smartphone for a
thousand dollars but let's not forget that this is a
gaming smartphone first and that's very important for you
guys to remember because it isn't something that's meant to compete with
oneplus or google or you know huawei's it's a
gaming smartphone and you might be wondering why would you
spend that kind of money on something like this while pc and
console users may not see the point of mobile gaming
it's a massive and growing market according to some studies it will go
way beyond a hundred billion dollars this year the mobile gaming market is
largely driven by countries like china india and other overseas markets
and it's slowly making its way into north america as well
but let's also acknowledge that a lot of this revenue is driven by
in-game purchases because while a game is free to download
you're gonna have to sort of pay your way through to unlock achievements or
certain packs and things like that to win uh
the game there hasn't been much focus on the need for higher frame rates in
mobile games but as titles become more demanding
higher end hardware is necessary to push developers to do more
even game streaming services like geforce now offer a broader selection of
titles if standard android games aren't your
thing now can this be used as a mini console 2 by plugging in a bluetooth
controller and outputting to a display via type c to an
hdmi adapter well this could be an interesting option
especially for someone who might not be able to have a pc or console but
still wants to play on a bigger display so that's it for me guys let me know
what you guys think about the ROG Phone 3 in the comments
in fact if you are in the market for an android flagship smartphone would you
consider getting a gaming smartphone or would you
just completely eliminate that off your list
i'm curious to know thank you so much for watching and i'll talk to you guys
in the next one