This is the ROG Phone 3 the ultimate gaming smartphone now if you've beenfollowing the smartphone market closely you're most likely aware of some of thechanges that ROG has done from the first generation of the ROGphone series to the second generation rog phone just to give you a quickbreakdown they've made the display faster from 90 hertz to 120 hertzthe cpu was updated to the fastest available at the timethe memory got a bump from 8 to 12 gigabytes the battery sizeit went from 4 000 milliamp hours to 6 000 milliamp hoursthe camera system got a bit of an upgrade as well from 12 megapixels to 48megapixels and pricing for the ROG Phone 2 wasaround 900 which was actually pretty goodconsidering what you were getting and now we're here in 2020 with the ROGPhone 3 and just after taking a quick glance at the specsand some of the features that asus has improvedon this phone i got to be honest this is by farthe coolest most unique looking smartphone that i've personally comeacross so let's check out what's new let's findout what's new about the ROG Phone 3 right after this what does it take toexperience a compact high performance gaming notebookyou want specs that can meet the most demanding taskslike a fast cpu up to 32 gigabytes of ramultra fast nvme ssd and rtx graphics you also want something that'slightweight and easy to carry around how about a robust optical mechanicalkeyboard with perky rgb lighting and a fast 144hz ips displaythis is a new xpg xenia gaming notebook check it out at the links below and gameto the extreme.
ROG Phone 3 Pricing & Specs:
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 gonnabe 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 come 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 you're getting the snapdragon 865 plus soc with 5g compatibility up to 16 gigabytes of lpddr5 ram half a terabyte of us 3.1 storage dual sim support a 6 000 milliamp-hour battery which is the same size as the rg phone 2.
Exterior Impressions:
So, nothing has changed there so the firstthing that stood out to me just after unboxing this phoneis the design i mean it's obvious it's a gaming smartphone made by ROGif you look at their notebook lineup their peripherals their graphics cardsthey're a class of their own and this phone sort of follows that trendyou get an rgb logo at the back that's customizable through softwarethere's also an aura rgb led right around the camera that shines a brightlight when you install the lightning bumpercase it gives you a matrix led layout that's pretty subtle but you can alsocustomize the colors to software which is pretty coolyou see this isn't your traditional flagship smartphone witha clean glass back and edge to edge displaythis is really designed to be practical for gamers and i'll talk about that alittle bit later in the video as for size this is a big phone in factit's bigger than my oneplus 8 pro which is already way too big for my handspersonally so you might have to get used to this form factor even if you havelarger hands now if you take a closer look at the ROGphone 3 and compared to the ROG Phone 2 not a lot has changed from a physicalstandpoint.
That 144Hz Screen:
the display still expands around 6.6inches it's 1080p plus amoled hdr 10 plus certified justlike the rog phone 2. however they did bump up the refreshrate from 120 hertz to 144 hertz it's also got a 270 hertztouch sampling rate the brightness levels have been improvedas well and asus also claims that they've improved the color accuracy onthis phone they say that it covers 113 dc ip3but out of the box i did notice that it exhibits cooler tones compared to myoneplus 8 pro there are different profiles that youcan play around through settings and i ended up going with the standard onebecause the colors looked neutral to my eyesnow you can change the color temperature and saturation levels to your preferenceand honestly i have no complaints with it so far but let's take a moment andtalk about that sweet buttery smooth 144 hertz refreshrate because switching from a oneplus 8 pro thatfeatures a 120 hertz display i personally didn't notice a hugedifference switching to the ROG Phone 3 but this is still a very fast displayand when you can find games that can supporta high refresh rate the experience is just unreal guysas you all know i'm into racing games and i've been playing need for speed nolimits recently and it just delivers a smooth experiencenot to mention with that incredibly fast touch sampling rateevery touch based input is noticeably faster than my oneplus 8 proi mean here's a slow-motion comparison between the two and you can tellthat the display responds even with the slightest movement of my fingerit's just a beautiful combination of hardware and software and let's notforget that this still features a flat display so you're not getting any curvesaround the edges thank you so much asus for keeping itthat way and you're also getting an in-display fingerprint sensorwhich works pretty well it's relatively as fast as the oneplus 8 pro so i haveno complaints.
ROG Phone 3 Gaming Features:
in that area now given the gaming brandattached to the smartphone there are some features that they've improved fromthe rog phone too so when you're holding the phone in landscape mode where thevolume and power buttons are located there are two invisible ultrasonicbuttons asus is calling this the air trigger 3technology basically you can remap your touch inputson the display within a gameplay to those individual buttonsthrough game genie which is an overlay that pops up when you enter a gameso that way you don't have to use your thumbs to interact with the gameyour two index fingers would do the job and those individual buttons come withhaptic feedback as well which is really nicenow with this generation of the ROG phone series asus has added support forsliding swiping and creating two partitions per button resulting in afour shoulder trigger configuration now i'mnot a hardcore gamer like a lot of you out there buthaving played some racing titles and some other games i'm actually reallyenjoying using these air triggers because then i don't have to worry aboutusing my thumbs i can focus a little bit more on mygameplay and these sort of features make a lot moresense for a gaming smartphone because theyare very useful and i'm sure if you're a hardcoremobile gamer you'll definitely find.
So Many Ports:
these useful 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 gamepad 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.
A Smartphone Cooler:
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 portsto 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 instance 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.
Some missing features:
because it really is pretty awesome unfortunately they didremove the headphone jack on the smartphone and i'm sure a lot of gamersmight 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 headsetsuh to use this phone without any accessories installedit just doesn't make any sense because the ROG Phone 2 had it why would theyeliminate something like this i mean asus has designed this to be a gamingsmartphone but they decided to eliminate one of the most crucial elements that people or gamers valuekeep in mind that this phone still doesn't have support for wirelesscharging and it also doesn't have an official rating so that all sort of makes sense becausewhen you take a look at the internal componentsof the smartphone asus has packed it with layers of enhancedcooling to make sure that the soc's clock speeds stay stable duringlonger gaming sessions because this thing has like an actualair 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 thefactors to consider which is totally.
Benchmarks & Battery Life:
understandable now after running some synthetic benchmarks and comparing it to my one plus 8 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 30watt fast charging but given how massive the battery issues have implemented a few battery care options to extend its lifespan 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 fora lot longer than i have and they've been getting close to six and 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.
Software Experience:
packs i'd say that's pretty amazing thesoftware experience for the most part is very close to what you get with a pixeland oneplus device asus has not loaded this thing with anybloatware applications except for armory crate which is theperformance tuning app for the phone in fact when you're setting up thedevice they'll give users the option to choose between a gamery style themeor a classic stock look which is what i prefer they have a dedicated theme storeif you want to expand your options you can also customize a few things withinthe ui like changing the system navigationstyle to either gesture based or the classic circle round and squarebuttons the armory crate software is like a gameportal where you can choose what performance modes you'd like to enablewithin certain games as you can see there is a game librarywhere i can launch a game or i can go into scenario profiles andfine-tune different factors that affect the gameplay experience liketouch sensitivity refresh rate performance network airtrigger customizations key mapping macros there's just so muchyou can explore and then if i switch over to the console tab this is where ican enable x mode which overclocks the cpu and letsit stay consistently at higher clock speeds keep in mind thatenabling x mode can affect battery life you can alsoadjust the fan speed of the aero active cooleruh system lighting and that's pretty much it now i'm not really sure whatsoftware support is going to be like for the smartphonein the next two to three years because when you look at the ROG Phone 2that phone just recently got the update to android 10so it's definitely not going to be first in line to receive the best that googlehas to offer.
ROG Phone 3 Camera Performance:
so that's something to keep in mind last but not least let's talk about the camera Asus has updated their main camera with sony's new imax686 sensor now don't confuse that with the imx689 sensor found on the one plus 8 pro the sensors do fall into the same category but they feature different characteristics you also get a 13megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera and a 5-megapixel macro camera lets start with the ultra-wide it does a pretty good job with dynamic range and exposure interestingly enough when I compared it to my one plus 8 promos noticed that the rog phone captured true-life colors and.
it just gets the white balance right there 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 one plus 8 pros 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 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 one plus 8 pros 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.
Video Performance:
this is the front-facing camera test on the rog phone 3. now this phone can shoot up to 8k at 30frames per second but you do lose hdr and image stabilization uh but you can also shoot at 4k up to120 frames per second which is awesome that is actually something that I've never seen from a smartphone camera which is great 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 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.
Conclusion:
so let me know what you guys think about it in the comments so there you guys have 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 one plus 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 Phone3 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.
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