Asus ROG Phone 2 Review: The Spec King! By Marques Brownlee

Asus ROG phone to the phone with every speck maxed out the absolute dream phone on paper. So the question is: how well do specks on paper, translate to real-world use in a phone and is pretty much the perfect phone to find that out. This is one of those phones that people sent me a lot to check out because well I made that dream phone video a little while back where I had all these crazy specs that I wanted to see in a phone and then Asus announced this and the spec sheet people said Oh mark is. It looks like they made. Basically, your dream phone, so I picked it up, and I've been using. It Is brought it to the Apple event that I've been using this phone for more than a week now, and I can tell you exactly what I think, but this is the spec sheet.

I just want to put this in one place for all of you who will appreciate this. Just listen to this world-class spec sheet: snapdragon 855, +, 12, gigs of ram one terabyte of UFS 3.0 storage, a six point: six inch! 120 hertz OLED display a 6,000 William hour battery and 48 megapixel dual cameras on paper. This is the best phone you can buy in almost every metric best chip, most Ram biggest storage, the fastest display the biggest battery straight across the board and with room still for a headphone jet. So how does absolutely dominating a spec sheet actually translate to real world use? Spoiler, pretty good. So, first the design, the package that you stuff all the specs into it's pretty similar to the first DOG phone they've toned it down a little.

You know there's a little less copper, a little less thin action, but it's still unmistakably a gaming phone. Of course the aesthetic isn't subtle, and the design is a bit more subjective. It's not really on the spec sheet. This is just what it looks like if you're cool carrying around a phone that looks like this or not and there's a certain type of person that will be I'll, say the number one thing you'll notice more than the glowing logo more than the vent cutout for cooling more than the circuit lines and the design that reflect a rainbow or a glow colors is that it's just absolutely huge like there are small phones and there are big phones. This is a huge phone.

You need a big footprint to fit all these specs and then, since it's made mostly of metal which is dense and with that battery. This is a really heavy phone about 240 grams to be exact, and you really feel that weight in your pocket and holding this thing, I'm cool with it, I like big phones, but you might have to see it or hold it in person to really like actually feel how big it is. That's what she said and then from there a lot of the design choices are made specifically with the gamer in mind, but a lot of them just end up being nice for people who just like media in general, so things like the USB type-c port is down on the side here, so you can still charge it while holding the phone sideways, and it doesn't get in the way. There are also dual front-facing stereo speakers, and they are incredible speakers. You know in a world where headphone jacks are slowly dying off but being replaced by a wireless audio.

The dual stereo front-facing speakers set is also an endangered species, and I'd like to bring awareness to that, and there really isn't much of a great replacement they're just worse speakers now, but yeah. These are perfect, crisp loud and clear. So, overall, the design, of course isn't for everyone. In fact, I prefer something a little cleaner, a little more understated, but there is a lot of good choices here. So I can respect that.

So, okay, then the specs first main specs are Snapdragon a 55 plus and 12 gigs of DDR 4 Ram. So of course it's going to be extremely fast, launching apps and then keeping a lot of them in memory and flipping through them. Yeah, having the highest end available. Specs here does great, but then there actually are some other things that make it feel even faster number one is the UFS 3.0 storage, it's really fast storage, that's helped. Phones like the OnePlus 7 pro and the galaxy fold feel much faster, including installing apps really quickly and launching apps really quickly and then number two.

Is this display? It's a six point, six inches, 120 Hertz AMOLED 1080p panel and so saying that out loud is that's a pretty unique spec sheet. That's a great number, but you got actually look at it. It is a very fast display. Actually, the fastest mobile display that I've ever seen. You can turn it down to the normal 60 Hertz.

If you want, you can bump it up to 90 Hertz or just keep it at 120. All the time like I did- and it also has a 240 Hertz touch response refresh. So it's super, quick and responsive to your touch. Scrolling, for example, is super smooth. You of course, can't really fully appreciate it through this video, which is only 30 FPS, but I guess take my word for it.

It's really snappy I think is the keyword very smooth and snappy so scrolling, the UI and any app, of course that supports the higher frame rate. Looks awesome, there's a whole list of games that support it, but I've said it once, and I'll say it again: high refresh rate all the things please, but it's not the best. Looking OLED in the world, it's 1080p for one which, on a 6.6-inch screen, is not a huge deal, but it's worth noting like it's not a low resolution, it's still almost 400 PPI but versus a 1440p display. You can't tell the difference and then colors and contrast just felt a little strange to me at times it has adjustable color profiles, but I never quite felt happy with the color calibration. It gets up to 600 nits, which is decently bright, but it doesn't get very dim at night, which I actually found much more annoying when it's dark, and I wish.

My phone wasn't so freaking bright. It also has a fingerprint reader underneath the display glass, and it's nowhere near the best ones. I've used it's not always glitchy, but it is glitchy more often than any other ones. I've used. It is definitely optical.

As you can see. You know, with the light shining on my fingerprint as it tries to read it, and it also has this weird artifact that's kind of hard to capture, but at lower brightness when you go to unlock with your fingerprint, the whole display sort of bumps up in brightness a little and gets really grainy and weird. Looking as it reads then just goes back to normal when it's done, it's not actually a problem or anything, but it's just a fascinatingly weird thing to see happen. So specs, it's got those for sure. But, like always, you have to look a little past the numbers to find and see interesting things like that.

But then speaking of numbers here are some other numbers to think about up to a terabyte of built-in storage. So that's that's pretty great. There is no expandable storage, but let's be real. You probably don't need more than a terabyte, so that number translates pretty well and then 6000. This is a six thousand William hour battery and that, as you can imagine, also translates through well, that is the biggest battery I've ever used in any smartphone, even at a hundred and twenty Hertz, all the time, I've never gotten close to killing this phone in a day on a super heavy day with me, where I had a lot of unplugged navigation and music streaming and I just intentionally never plugged in during the day, I ended the day after 10:00 p.

m. with about five hours of screen on time and half battery left Wow, just I, don't know it's my dream: smartphone battery, literally never ever worrying about if I'm going to have to charge during the day and then just plug it in every night, you could probably go on a weekend road trip and not bring your charger and come back. Two days later, with like 30% battery for real and if you're ever worried for some reason, you're going to have to go like four straight days without charging like this is the dream scenario for a battery in a smartphone. You could just turn it down to 90 Hertz or turn it down to 60, Hertz and you're good for a while so yeah. This is a that number 6000 translates very well, then here's another number 48, it's a 48, megapixel primary camera on the back at F 1.79. This turns out is one of those specs where you can just kind of ignore the number you might be tempted to believe.48. Megapixels automatically means it's good, but this you know it's a decent camera I'd, give it a B b-minus for quality, maybe with great software tuning or G cam.

It could get up to a B+, but it's not blowing anyone's minds here. Images can look pretty good when you give them a lot of light, of course, and it does have great HDR, but sharpness and color I've noticed, and white balance are more inconsistent. They can hit or miss and there's actually a bit of noticeable shutter lag, which I thought was strange for a phone, that's otherwise so incredibly fast, but it also has a 13 megapixel ultra-wide at 125 degree, field of view and similar to some other phones, I'm glad it has one. But the inconsistency between the two cameras, especially as far as color and sharpness and detail, is major. So you know it's an extra fun camera to have, but clearly not as high quality.

This has kind of been one of the themes I've noticed about gaming. Phones, though, is that people who use these don't really take a ton of photos or care as much about the critical quality of photos on videos. So the cameras are just good enough matter of fact for reference, a reviewers guide for the phone just to go over all the features and things I should check out it's 41 pages long and the camera stuff is not talked about at all until page 36. So you know, I do actually want to give a sous major props or something, though so, if you remember the first ASUS ROG phone, that software was a little over the top. The themes and the icons very gamer ii and the mechanical sounds, and it was a bit much, so I did criticize it a bit in that first video well an DOG phone — when you first set it up, you get the option to choose between that very heavy RO GUI or this sort of near stock clean Zen UI, and that is what I like to see.

I am now happy with the software experience on the DOG phone — I of course chose the new Zen UI, and so there's no Gaudy icons or robot sound effects or anything crazy like that. It's something closer to maybe like an oxygen OS or any other light skin on Android, not sure about the upgrade schedule. Still Android 10 is starting to roll out, and it's just kind of a pixel thing for right now, but I'm impressed with what we have here so far. There are still plenty of gaming features. Of course, though, it wouldn't be a republic of gamers phones without that there's still the armory create and game modes, Game Genie, X mode, the system, lighting control- it's all still here, don't worry, there's even improved air triggers on each side of the phone for gaming and landscape, but if I'm being perfectly real I, don't play a whole ton of like really intense games on my phone I don't play fortnight on my phone, so like I guess it says something that even a phone, that's not targeted directly to me, has still been so enjoyable to use.

This is a really great phone. Now is probably still going to go a bit under the radar just because it's not going to be in carrier stores, and it's a gamer phone by a smaller company. So it feels much more niche. But if you get excited about this type of thing or if you're a gamer on your phone or if you just saw the spec sheet and went that looks sick, then you are squarely in the target demographic of people who will really enjoy using us. It's not perfect.

You know there are small trade-offs. The cameras aren't world-class. The all metal body is solid, of course, and it's going to be heavy but also means no wireless charging and there's also no official water resistance or IP rating, and the phones Achilles heel really is just the size of the damn thing. So here we are at the end of the review, if you're, finding yourself sitting there thinking wow I really want to know. If I can tell the difference between that 120 Hertz and 90 Hertz versus 60, with my eye and I can't wait to play these games at high frame rates.

Yeah, you'll love this phone, you know so turns out. The spec King on paper does deliver in real life, and it also turns out design is very important, but let me know what you think: do just the specs make it the dream phone, or would you buy this phone just for the specs over something a little more tame, I'm curious? What you think, let me know either way. Thank you for watching catch. You guys in the next one peace.

Source : Marques Brownlee