The latest wave of gaming phone launches has begun. Last week Nubia announced the absolutely ridiculous Red Magic 6, and now Asus has come up with a slightly different version: a this is a a little more sophisticated, though it packs massive specs.
The first thing you will notice on the ROG Phone 5 (Asus skipped 4 to avoid bad luck) is an updated design. Asus saystched attention-looking for an active ventilation channel for the company used in the previous model for a more elegant model, although still inspired by cyberpunk, later, which this time is available in black and white. And while Asus was increasing the amount of RGB lighting, using a perforated grille to hide the LEDs results in a slightly larger look.
Inside, the ROG Phone 5 includes specifications similar to the previous model, including a 6.78-inch 2448 x 1080 AMOLED display with a refresh rate of 144Hz (slightly lower than the 165Hz display used in the Red Magic 6), along with a Snapdragon 888 chip, 8GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage, a huge 6,000 mAh battery and triple rear cameras (64 MP main macro, 13 MP ultra wide and 5 MP macro). But this is just the base model.
There’s also a Pro model that includes 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, but the real striking model is the ROG Phone 5 Ultimate, which includes a whopping 18GB of RAM and, most importantly, it has a back panel with a built-in black and white screen that can be programmed to display whatever you want.
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I appreciate all the little tweaks that Asus made to this generation’s ROG Phone 5, including an 800-night screen that’s 200 nights brighter than before, even better front-facing stereo speakers (impressive thing considering the ROG Phone 3 already had the best audio from a smartphone) and 300 Hz touch sampling to reduce input latency while playing. Heck, Asus even went so far as to include a new DAC and reclaimed the 3.5mm headphone jack on the ROG Phone 5, having abandoned the port of previous ROG phones.
And to really improve its mobile gaming credit, Asus worked with Sentons to improve the fifth-generation AirTriggers of the ROG Phone 5, which packs nine tiny piezoelectric sensors on both touchscreens of the phone.sensitive activators to offer the bestdashboard controls yet.
Finally, to help improve mobility and faster charging, Asus split the ROG Phone 5’s 6,000 mAh battery into two different sections, allowing for better heat and charge management up to 65 watts.
The only real problem right now is that there are no official details on when the ROG Phone 5 will be available in the US, which means we now have to rely on European prices. The standard ROG 5 is expected to go on sale someday in March starting at 799 euros (about $ 950), with the Pro model arriving in April for 1,199 euros (about $ 1,430) and The Ultimate Edition is scheduled to arrive in May for 1,299 euros (about $ 1,550).