Asus ROG Phone 3 review: A gaming behemoth for everyone! By Android Authority

This video is sponsored by Word, VPN click. The link in the video description to learn more P sews is a pretty massive computer company. They make pretty much everything related to computers like mice and keyboards, and peripherals and motherboards, but over the last couple of years, they've probably been best known for their ROG gaming brand and a couple of years ago gaming phones started blowing up in the landscape. We saw stuff like the razor phone, the red new, BM magic and Asus thought we have to get in on this, but it's Asus, and they didn't want to be beat, so they went to Qualcomm, and they asked them if they could make an overclocked version of the flagship, Snapdragon 845 processor, for their brand-new ASUS ROG phone last year, Isis refined at the DOG phone I went to Qualcomm again and Qualcomm made a new version of the processor, now called the Snapdragon 855 Plus, which was available to more consumers. Now Asus refines the design of their ROG phone. They made it a little less game II in your face, and they tried to appeal to a wider audience.

They actually brought over a big part of the UI interface from these n phones, 6, which had a much broader appeal, and this year ASUS is trying to do it again: they've once again refined their ROG phone to create the DOG phone 30. So the design of the KG phone 3 hasn't really changed a ton from the DOG phone -. They tried to make it a little more subtle. They removed some orange accent colors that you saw on the vents and on the speakers of the phone, and it's still a pretty thick phone, but that's to account for the 6000 million of our battery. That's in this thing now, just like last year, there are multiple USB seaports on the DOG phone.3 you've got the standard, USB-C port on the bottom of the phone, which is actually shifted to the left for the weird shape of the motherboard. Then you've got another USB-C port on the left side of the phone, and this is made for a number of reasons, one if you're playing a game in landscape mode.

It's a lot more comfortable to have the USB cable plugged in to the side of the device, so that doesn't get in the way of your hands and -. It was made to attach this brand-new cooler called the arrow active cooler 3. Now this is a literal fan that you strap to the back of your phone to cool it because it does get pretty toasty in everyday use, but especially while gaming. Now this arrow active cooler has more uses than just cooling the phone that that is obviously very useful. It's got a headphone jack in the bottom, so you can listen to music or listen to your game while you're playing it.

Unfortunately, they removed it from the body of the phone, so they put it in here. Instead, you've got another USB-C port. So again you can play in landscape mode without it being uncomfortable, and this year they've added a kickstand to it. So if you have a separate controller, you can set your phone up, and it can be cooled while you're playing a game now that aerodynamic vapor chamber on the side of the phone is definitely where most of the heat builds up. But there is a little vent above it to actually spew heat out of the phone, but still the phone gets pretty toasty.

So if you're gaming or doing anything intensive, it's pretty useful to use that cooler. Now the fan is especially useful when you're using a mode called X mode, and that is basically a profile on the phone that will keep sustained performance on the phone for as long as you have the mode on now. Normally, when you're, not in this mode, the phone will kind of boost and drop. The clock speeds to match what you're doing, but this will maintain a very high clock, speed for a long period of time to make sure that you don't drop frames during a gaming session and a colleague, Gary Sims from Gear explains made an application that basically runs his benchmark. Speed test G from 100% to until the phone is out of battery and running the phone with X mode on versus X mode off, really shows how it helps sustain performance over time.

They are active, cooler, definitely obviously helped, but putting the phone into X mode will keep it at a pretty consistent clock speed so that you're not like dropping frames, while you're playing games. Excellent software also lets you tweak things like the clock, speed of individual cores on the Qualcomm Snapdragon, a 65 Plus, which is just an insane level of control that you're not gonna, get on very many other smartphones. Now, most people, probably won't care, and they'll probably just use different profiles. The Asus gives you, but if you're super hardcore- and you want to set that prime core to as high as you can but set those other cores to a little lower clock speed, you can do that if you want, but before we get to the next section, we got to get a shout-out to our sponsor Word VPN. Staying safe online is a bigger concern than ever before.

Norton V PN protects your privacy and lets you browse the Internet anywhere in the world. Having trouble streaming content, that's blocked in your region, worried about bad actors on public Wi-Fi check out the link in the description to get 70% off, and thank you to Word VPN for sponsoring this video. Now speaking of frames, Asus made the KG phone to have a 120 Hertz display and last year that was pretty unheard of. That was a brand-new feature, but now a lot of flagship phones actually have 120 hertz displays and again ASUS didn't want to be beat so in the ROG fund.3 you've got a 144 hertz display and I can't say that I can notice a huge difference between 120 Hertz and 144 Hertz, but either way it's pretty insane. That phones can actually support that frame rate.

Now so far there aren't a ton of games that support full 144. Hertz frame rates games like dead cells do and ASA says that they're adding a lot more overtime. But since last year there have been a ton of games that have moved up to support a hundred and twenty Hertz of refresh rate. So that's pretty good anyway. Now, x-mode isn't the only thing that makes this a gaming phone.

Last year, I sews added these capacitive air triggers on the side of the phone, which can basically be used as buttons and games like shooters or any other kind of game that you want this year. They've done a lot more to make those air traders even better. So there are two air triggers on the side of the phone, but Isis has set different zones for them. So now you've actually got four different zones that you can click they've, also added swiping and sliding actions. So you can set up to eight different functions for these buttons, and it's really intuitive how it works.

I, don't personally play a lot of shooters on my phone, but a friend that has the ASUS ROG phone two says that it is really pie. Now you set these air triggers and a software called a game genie which comes stuck on the phone, and it's pretty well-designed. Honestly, you can record gameplay with it, you can add crosshairs, and you can set the action points in which you want to have the air trigger set on top of so effectively. You just put the air triggers over a UI element in the game, and you can set different profiles so that it maintains it for every game that you jump to it's pretty intuitive, but look if you don't want to do that. Asus works really hard to make sure that this is still an overall good, smartphone, not just a gaming device and that's pretty evident in the UI too, when Asus made these n phone six, it completely redid Zen you to make it way simpler, use a lot of Google Apps, just make it very close to stock Android and when they launch the DOG phone -.

They brought that over as an option. Now, in the orange we've thrown three they've got four different profiles embedded in the phone there's three different gamer e profiles, but then there's the classic profile, which makes it look like a regular, very close to stock smartphone. So for people that don't want those really gamer e UI elements, you can switch it to be a lot more simple and that choice carries over to an experience. That's matched by the specs. You've got up to 16 gigabytes of ddr4 ram.

You've got up to 512 gigabytes of u FS, 3.1 storage I mean this phone. Just flies, I definitely didn't have any UI or stuttering issues and when running speed test G, this phone performed better than pretty much any other phone we've tested. It's superfast. Now in the last couple, DOG phones, the 6000 million power battery, made this phone stay alive forever. I mean that's a huge sell, so it lasts a couple of days and in some circumstances that was the case on this phone as well.

The max amount of battery life I got was over 9 hours of screen on time, closer to 10 hours of screen on time, and that's just insane. That's pretty much two full days of battery life, but on some days I got closer to six and a half or seven hours of screen on time, which again isn't bad, but it's just kind of weird that it's fairly inconsistent now I'm, assuming that that's because I had the screen refresh rate on auto mode, it would probably go up and down, depending on the apps that I was using, but you should be aware of that now. Asus does chip this one with a 30 watt charger, and it does charge the phone pretty quickly, especially considering that this is a six thousand William hour battery. So that's really nice to see as well and finally, we get to the camera system and I know. I know a gaming phone probably doesn't have the camera system as its main priority, but man I was really surprised at how good these cameras are.

The main sensor is a 64 megapixel, Sony, imx6 86 and overall it had perfect dynamic range, perfect, color and perfect sharpness. Now wasn't the best in low-light, but overall I mean it's perfect, like I preferred this camera system to the Samsung Galaxy s 20, which is saying something. You've also got a 13 megapixel wide-angle sensor, which has a pretty similar color profile to the main sensor and a lot of dynamic range too I mean you can literally point this at the Sun and still get sky detail it's pretty insane, but it would randomly get some weird splotchiest, which was kind of random. It wasn't that common, but it is important to note and then on the back. You've got a 5 megapixel macro camera and by and large I kind of feel, like macro cameras are just thrown in there to add specs to spec sheets, and it's kind of annoying.

But the macro camera on the DOG phone 3 was pretty solid, and it's definitely better than the 2 megapixel macro camera on the 1 plus 8. So I can't complain now in the front. You've got a 24 megapixel, selfie, camera and images looked really quite good. They had good sharpness, good dynamic range and perfect. Color I wasn't expecting a selfie camera on a gaming phone to be that good, but I was pleasantly surprised and even took pretty good photos in relatively low light.

Now, what are the negatives? Because there's got to be negatives right? Well, the KG front 3 doesn't have ip68 water in dust resistance because of the vent on the back. It doesn't have a built-in headphone jack anymore, which kind of sucks when it was in the hardy phone — and it doesn't have wireless charging, which is quite a bummer for me, because I use wireless charging all around my house now. Ok, so how much does this thing cost? Well, there are three main models that are being announced today. There is a model with 12 gigabytes of RAM and 512 gigabytes of storage that is being sold for 999 euros, there's a model with 16 gigabytes of RAM and 512, gigabytes of storage, that's being sold for 1099 euros, and then there going to be a Strip model which is actually a lower end model which is kind of weird because. Usually Strip is there like super high-end gaming brand, but that's going to be sold for 799 euros, and it has a regular Snapdragon, a 65.

It has less storage and less RAM. Now, obviously, a thousand euros is a lot of money, no matter what phone you're buying, but for what this phone offers. I actually think. That's worth it compared to the competition. If you look at a similarly spec to Galaxy S 20 altar, that's about 13 99 euros and that you're not getting be snap during a 65 plus you're, not getting the massive 6000 million power battery you're, not getting be 144, Hertz, refresh rate or the air triggers or x-mode.

Of course, if you go with that phone, you are getting I P, six, eight water and dust resistance, you're, getting wireless charging, and you're getting the 108 megapixel camera depends on how much you care about that look. I think the KG phone 3 is a perfect phone. It's kind of an amazing UI, perfect cameras, insane performance and some really cool features that gamers are really going to appreciate. Obviously, if you need some other bells and whistles like wireless charging or a headphone jack you're, going to have to look elsewhere, but for what ASUS is asking for this phone I think it's pretty solid. I know these guys I think that's about it for the ASUS ROG phone 3.

Now I have a very detailed post over Andrew Authority comm, and I've got a link in the description. If you want to check that out, that's about 4,000 words. So if you want to go super in-depth I've got all that information over there and until next time, I'll catch you in the next video you.

Source : Android Authority