Introduction:
It seems that one of the best gaming phones on the planet will target a more general audience. Look at the previous Rows. There are Rog 1, 2, 3, they omitted 4 because that number is bad luck, 5, 6, and 7. This here is the Rog Phone 8 Pro.
Its appearance is more common. Asus still makes other mainstream phones, like the Zen fone, and Rog still stands for Republic of Gamers, so this is still a gaming phone. But what makes these phones so good at gaming also makes them very good at media and generally everyday use. So Asus got thinking and finally decided to market this great phone to the public.
I think this is the first model where they committed to that idea, but this one still includes everything you expect from a gaming laptop. There's a hidden screen on the back and plenty of incredible specs, but the change is real. Given that it's still a gaming phone, I'm not surprised that it has cutting-edge specs.
It has a 6.78-inch, 165-hertz AMOLED display that reaches a brightness of 2,500 nits. It has a 3.3 gigahertz Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, up to 24 gigs of LPDDR5X RAM, and a terabyte of UFS 4.0 storage. It scored an absurd score in 3DMark and PC Mark, and runs Genshin Impact at 60 FPS. This phone is very fast.
It's great for opening apps and switching from one to another, and for normal use. It's one of the fastest phones I've ever used. Taking a photo is very fast from the moment you touch the shutter button. Even the fingerprint reader under the glass reacts quickly. Overall, it's the fastest and most responsive phone I've ever used.
You and I know it's great and can be used for gaming, but if you were in Asus's shoes, how would you go about selling it as a great everyday phone? Because to be honest, previous phones were very gamer-like. First, it should be easier to use with one hand.
Basic:
If you're using it for gaming, you'll mostly have it in landscape and two-handed mode, but normal phone stuff is usually viewed in portrait and one-handed mode. Asus shrank all the bezels, which is quite noticeable on the top and bottom, and it looks good because it's similar to other high-end phones.
This is the first time an ROG Phone has a hole-punch in the screen for the camera, but it's so small that it looks totally normal. The bad thing is that this took a little space away from the front speakers. While the stereo speakers are still quite powerful and sound very good, the truth is that they are not as incredible as last year's ones.
Asus also made the frame much thinner on the sides, and it looks like other phones, so for the first time, the phone measures less than 9 millimeters. It remains very well-balanced, even with the protruding camera that we will talk about later. But of course, thinner means the battery is a little smaller, which is a first for an ROG Phone.
It goes from 6000 William hours to 5500. To be honest, I haven't noticed the difference while using it because it is still a champion in terms of battery life even though it has been reduced in size thanks to all the optimizations that Asus has made in the software.
So the result of all that trimming and molding is a phone that, while large, is much closer to the normal size of a phone. It's almost the same size as my Pixel 8 Pro, but still has room for gamer and media-friendly features. There's a second USB-C port on the side, so you can keep charging your phone while you play.
Features:
Many people don't use wireless charging, and that's fine, but it's a feature that smartphones are expected to have to be considered versatile and high-end. If wireless charging isn't your thing, you can charge your phone with the 65-watt charger cable that's included in the box.
In previous reviews, I used to say that the camera was pretty bad, but that didn't matter because this was a gaming phone and the camera wasn't the main reason you bought it, so it was fine. But this all changes if you want to market this phone to a broader audience as an everyday phone, and suddenly the camera becomes one of the most important parts.
Look. This is a new system for this phone. There is a 50-megapixel main camera, a 3X telephoto lens, and a 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens. Compared to the Zen phone 10 which is also from Asus, this one is more advanced, but still not cutting-edge. Don't the different departments of the company talk to each other? The main camera has an IMF 890 sensor.
It's the same one found on the OnePlus 11, Nothing Phone 2, and some other phones between $600 and $700. It produces photos that look just like those taken by those phones. Sometimes they are decent in good lighting, but most have too much motion blur and HDR.
Sometimes when you take a photo of a person, it seems like the goal is to increase the exposure of the face and lower everything else. He is very aggressive. It seems to use algorithms from a five-year-old sensor. It has good things, like the ability to record stable videos thanks to the six-axis hybrid stabilizer, just like the Zen phone.
So you can record in low light and holding the phone in your hand, and the video will look good. Now the front camera has a wider angle, although it still has the HDR effect. The telephoto lens is something new that the Zenfone doesn't have and is very useful.
If you tend to zoom a lot, 3X isn't much, but the stabilization is incredibly good, so you can still use digital zoom. The bottom line from what I just said is that the camera is better now, but it's clearly not the main feature of the phone. Doesn't stand out.
This wouldn't be so bad if it were a phone that costs between $600 and $700, but as you probably already noticed from my tone and the rest of the specs, that's not the case with this phone. This is a high-end phone with a high-end price.
The initial retail price of the ROG Phone is $1,100. And the ROG Phone Pro, which is the version I'm reviewing in this Post, and which has 24 gigs of RAM and a terabyte of storage, costs $1,500. I should mention that with every phone that comes out this year that has Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, you will notice that artificial intelligence features will be incorporated. This phone is one of the first. There may be one or two more with this chip, but Qualcomm has integrated new.
Conclusion:
Gaming phones always had a lot of things like lights and screens on the back, and there was no space for wireless charging. It didn't bother me because the target audience wasn't interested in that, but this time there is room.
However, the charging point is higher than normal, because it is above the screen. It's a little higher than most other phones, so if I put the ROG Phone on a wireless charger like this, it doesn't line up and won't charge. But I found that if I put it on its side it does charge, so you'll have to play with this a bit. Artificial intelligence functions into it.
And boy does every manufacturer have something new AI to show off on their phone. There are some smart things on this phone, like pattern recognition to fast-forward through recognized scenes in certain supported games, or even recognize what's on the screen and suggest a guide to the part of the game you're in. But I also found other more useful things. For example, with a better understanding of the language, you can find a setting based on what you type.
If you write “two of one,” it knows you're referring to the app twins feature, which lets you have multiple accounts open in a single app at the same time. But in general, the topic to watch in 2024 will be the artificial intelligence functions in phones with this chip.
Just trust me and what I tell you. So what conclusion do we come to with the ROG Phone? Simply put, I think this is a very capable, powerful, and fast Android phone, as it always has been. And it's a little more discreet. In this phone, Asus sacrificed some of the gamer features to appeal to the public. And I think a lot of the decisions it made to achieve this, like making the battery a little smaller to reduce the bezels and overall thickness by a millimeter or two, were very smart.
Good. However, it kept the gamer aspect with the rear screen, and added wireless charging and IP68 water resistance. But there is one point where this phone fails to stand out. The camera system. It's good, but not impressive. And that is one of the most important features in a high-end phone. Therefore, the ROG Phone is still a perfect gaming phone. Thanks for joining me. See you soon. Bye bye.
