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- I'm gonna level with you.
I've never really been into mobile gaming
because I've never found mobile games all that engrossing.
Well this smartphone right here?
I think this was built to change that.
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Okay. So this is the Asus ROG Phone.
ROG for Republic of Gamers.
Now as you YouTube subscribers already know,
Asus isn't the only company bringing a gaming smartphone
to market in 2018.
I went hands on with the ROG Phone's biggest competitor,
the Razer Phone 2 a couple weeks ago.
The full review is coming soon.
It's very impressive.
But though these two products
are targeting similar consumers,
they're doing it very differently.
The Razer Phone 2 is a hard-edged, angular monolith.
It tries to walk the line between gamer and power user.
Well, the ROG Phone is a rounded and super-stylized slate
whose aesthetics say one thing.
This is a muscle car,
and it's made for playing hard.
Just look at the copper grills
on the vent ports around back,
next to the engraved call-out reminding you
that for this phone,
traditional cooling just won't do.
See the Snapdragon 845 running the show,
is the same chip you'll find
in almost every high-end smartphone of 2018.
But this one is capable of running a little faster.
Nearly 3 GHz.
More work equals more heat.
Maybe more than the built in vapor-chamber
and heat spreader can deal with.
So in the box with the phone (chuckles),
you get a fan.
Asus calls this the Aero Active Cooler,
but it's literally a slap-on fan.
It forces air through the phone's casing to cool it better.
Yes, you can feel it on your fingers when you're playing
and even will blow your hair around if you hold it up
to your head like a moron.
Of course, there's custom software here.
Each game you play on the ROG phone
can have it's own profile.
So you can set parameters by game.
Like what clock speed you want to run at.
How fast do you want the fan to run
if the cooler's attached.
Whether you want to dump everything else out of RAM
when you open the game.
And what refresh rate you want from the display.
This screen maxes out at 90 Hz.
Not quite the 120 Hz of the Razer Phone,
but it has other advantages.
It's an OLED panel instead of an LCD.
And it is substantially brighter.
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Back to the Aero Active for one second.
It plugs into a special side connector
that also contains another USB-C port,
so you can switch from a portrait game to a landscape one,
and continue charging without your grip getting all weird.
Oh, and get this.
In a world where more and more phones are eliminating
the traditional headphone port.
The ROG phone?
It gives you two between the phone and the fan.
If you prefer to give your sound more room to spread out,
the Front Firing speakers are incredibly powerful.
The power of this package is just amazing.
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But even a casual like me knows that gaming is
about more than power,
and Asus knows it too.
Check out these textured call-outs on the side of the phone.
These are called AirTriggers.
They're ultrasonic touch sensors that serve as buttons
when you're playing your game.
Like the bumpers on a console controller.
My favorite part about these is that they work
with any app.
You just drag these circles over whatever
on-screen targets you want them to tap.
When you click the triggers.
Boom!
Extra buttons.
I love thoughtful touches like these that have an effect
on how you use the phone.
And I even appreciate 'em when they're just a little
bit of shallow fun,
like the customizable multi-colored logo on the Back Plate.
Now here's why I can't finish this review
in just one video folks.
I have yet to use the ROG Phone
for anything other than gaming.
The big 4000mAh powered battery,
the dual-camera array with its ultra wide option.
I've still gotta put those to the test.
And the reason for that?
It's not just phonetober fest.
It's that I don't think it's possible
to review this phone completely
without also trying all of its accessories.
The accessories are a huge part of this story.
And I think most customers who are considering buying
this phone will also buy those.
Asus tells me I'll be able
to check those out in a few weeks.
So once again, please subscribe to the YouTube channel
so you don't miss part two.
I will close on a few of the complaints I've jotted
down so far.
I'm not quite sure about the look
of the custom Asus software.
The fingerprint sensor definitely takes
some getting used to.
And the lack of wireless charging or water resistance
beyond IPX4 is kind of a bummer.
Minor issues,
but at $899, the ROG Phone is 100 bucks more
than the direct competition from Razer.
A hundred bucks more than the Google Pixel 3.
And wouldn't it be easier to save up for that some
if you had a, I don't know,
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What do you wanna know about the ROG phone folks?
Drop a line in the comments below
and follow me on Instagram and Twitter.
You can ask me questions there too.
Until next time,
thanks for watching
and stay mobile, my friends.
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