ROG Phone 5 Ultimate Unboxing - So Fast it's Funny. By Mrwhosetheboss

Okay, you might remember the ROG phone three. It was the battery life champion. It had literally the best speakers on a mobile device. Furthermore, it was my gaming smartphone of the year and this close to being my overall smartphone of the year. So you could probably imagine that when ASUS came out and said, we've got a ROG phone, five, a ROG phone five pro and a ROG phone five ultimate, which I will get to. I practically wept myself with excitement not like that.

So this is how it was packaged. I wouldn't say it's hugely exciting, given how some of their last phones were presented, but it is still way above 2021 standards. It comes with a sticker pack, a classic ROG style, not very protective but still stylized case and not just a charger, but a much faster charger than last year at 65 watts. You've got to respect that decision. It would have been very easy now that Samsung and Apple are giving one to just say we care about the environment too, and then just drop it, but they didn't, and we've also got a pretty nice braided, USB-C, cable and the phone, and what you're seeing right now was also the very first time that I'd seen this thing I hadn't had any leaks.

I hadn't had a briefing I was going in blind, hmm. That was pretty much my first impression bearing in mind that these are the phones we came from and that this is the kind of design quality we've experienced in 2021. I was just kind of expecting a little more, like maybe a design that took last year's further to demonstrate how it's now gotten more powerful, maybe chrome accents to give it some class, or maybe even just a matte finish, given how much time people are going to spend gripping this thing, it's just it's just a little plain and I don't mind playing, but if that's what they were going for, then there are many phones out there with better execution of this concept. Also, this whole pixel art logo on the back. It is configurable, and it's never going to be a negative to have an option like that, but I am just kind of surprised that they're still doing these four generations in, like I totally get having LEDs in a PC case when I built my own PC, seven or so years ago.

I loaded that thing up, but there's a distinct difference between a computer, that's powered through the mains and a mobile where battery life is a precious resource, let alone the simple fact that what proportion of time on your phone are you looking at the back, and even when you are looking at the back, isn't your hand just going to cover it to be clear. I don't hate this design, it feels great it's hand friendly and the materials are high end, I'm just slightly disappointed by how remarkably okay, it looks given how much of an impression some of their past phones made on me, but then I started using it, and it became very clear that actually, this phone is anything but just okay. It takes the already extreme aspects of last year's ROG phone 3, and it cranks that lever, as far as it can possibly go with current technology, with just one important caveat. So one of the first things you'll feel when you start using this phone is that they care as well as keeping the charger while others dropped it. This still has a headphone jack with a high-end DAC to support it in a year when it's almost a given that a flagship phone won't have that, and they've put so much thought into the software like this is the setup screen complete with its own setup screen soundtrack they've got this augmented reality experience where you can see the comic on the retail box come to life when viewed through the phone.

They, let you choose whether you want the crazy, gamer, aesthetic or something much more minimal. It is shockingly easy to find and apply themes, and they completely change how the phone looks, and it's probably not a coincidence how much the standby key on this phone sounds like the menus in Pok?mon. Games like this is Pok?mon. This is the ROG phone point is with this phone you're getting a device that feels like it was meticulously designed one that feels like it was made with you at the front and center, and it is backed by a serious spec sheet. A 144hz AMOLED gorilla glass Vitus display with about twice the touch responsiveness of any other flagship, but snapdragon 888 chipsets paired with 8 to 16, gigs of fast lpddr5 ram and a 6000 William hour battery.

If early gaming phones were a house, this is the entire city, but it's actually even more than its specs make. It seems like take performance. You might look at the fact that this has the same chip as the US galaxy, s21, ultra and think cool flagship level performance, but it's actually more than that, so using the maxed out models of both phones. What I did was to run three back to back and two an tutu benchmarks to test not just performance, but also how well performance can sustain with continued use, and it turns out, at least according to this benchmark. The ROG phone ends up almost a generational leap ahead.

It does get externally hotter, though, while the Samsung was sitting at just under 40 degrees Celsius. This was well on its way to 50. , but I did reach out to ASUS and asked them about this, and they said that was just the cooling mechanism doing its job. They said that it's designed to basically take heat away from the chipset as quickly as possible, even if that does mean it makes the outside hotter and if we then run that same test again now using the proactive cooler for the dog, which lets it activate an even higher performance mode, called x mode, plus the gap gets even wider. It doesn't seem to raise the max score, but after three more back-to-back and 2-2 tests, it does mean that the peak level of performance can be sustained continuously and this whole deal of getting a gaming phone.

With this, it's about more than just frame rates and points in benchmarks. You get every feature of the ROG phone 3, everything from capacitive triggers to the game, genie pull-out, menu to cross-hair customization, but compared to that phone, this one takes them even further. Like the capacitive triggers are now even more sensitive, you can manually tune your own CPU and GPU speeds. You can add advanced motion controls to games that would normally be controlled using on-screen buttons. You can even invert your screen, colors to potentially better highlight enemies.

There is no doubt in my mind that this is the most settings I have ever seen on a phone. You can build your own custom display profile, have full control over system animation speeds. Without going into developer settings, you can pick which icons will show up in your status bar and that's without even touching on the ridiculously intricate performance and battery saving profiles or the ability to schedule times when your phone can switch between them. Honestly, just for the sake of making this video concise, we can't even cover all of them, and even if 95 of these features will go over most people's heads. The point is, you can hand this phone to anybody while gaming, and they will notice something impressive about it.

It could be how instantaneous and snappy the display feels it could be the fact that the phone fits really well in the hands or quite possibly, and quite probably, the in-game audio. This audio system. Honestly, like I already mentioned that the ROG phone 3 had the best speakers you could get on a phone. This takes that it dials up the audio software to the next level, whilst adding in 35 larger, sound chambers. This sound is so good that I've had multiple occasions where I've been scrolling on a feed, and I go past a video it autoplays, and I've been so taken aback by the sound coming from it that I've taken a second to soak it in and then scrolled back up and actually watched that video, it's the closest phone has come to making it feel like the person you're watching is actually sitting right there in the room with you.

The main cost to this is the fact that we do have a pretty significant forehead and chin, which do make the phone look a little dated in 2021, but I know some gamers prefer this as something to grip on and if you are enjoying this video, then a sub to the channel would be well hopefully not dry. Now, probably, the best example of ASUS's approach to this phone is what they've done with the battery last year's ROG phone 3 already had extreme battery life, but this time we have not just a six thousand million power capacity, but literally every battery protection mechanism under the sun they've knocked the charging power up from 30 watts to 65 watts all while actually keeping the charging temperatures lower to prolong the lifespan of the battery. This phone is so extreme in some ways that it's almost easy to forget that it starts at just 799 euros yeah. I was only given euro prices, but for context. The base galaxy s21 is 8.49, so is that it then did ASUS just do it. Did they just win the smartphone market? Well, almost, but no see, one thing becomes very clear when you use this phone ASUS has listened to their community if their core audience has told them.

They want something it's here, and that makes this phone amazing for that group of people, but by focusing only on that, I think it's fallen into a bit of a trap. Think about it. If ASUS is relying on feedback from the most engaged portion of their last phone's user base, who are those people most probably competitive, gamers, maybe esports players that five percent of enthusiasts who actually do use the already ridiculous number of features it had. Don't get me wrong. It's important to listen to those users, but by allowing this very small subsection to dictate the features of your next phone you're actually going to make a device.

That's even more focused on the things it already did well like making these capacitive buttons even more sensitive, and you're gonna focus less on actually addressing your weaknesses like the camera system. Now let me just make a distinction here. This does not mean we have a bad camera. I labeled the ROG phone 3s as good enough, and this is basically the same as that: 64 megapixel main sensor, 13 megapixels, ultrawide, 5, megapixel macro for close-ups, but every year as other devices are improving and, let's be honest, improving fast when it comes to cameras, your expectation of what you should get goes up, and so, while this isn't necessarily a worse camera than the phone we got last year, it is worse value than that when compared to the alternative options. Now, when there's plenty of light, it's fine, it can even be good, but as soon as you step indoors or anywhere bordering on low light, it really exposes how much progress competitors like Samsung have made, especially if you're going to be using that ultrawide camera or the macro camera.

Also, while it does have what I would call good quality, electronic image. Stabilization, there's no optical image stabilization, and it's not just the case that they skimped on cameras on the base model so that they can hit a certain price. But if you pay more, you get more, they have a ROG phone five pro. They have a rg5 ultimate edition and the cameras are still exactly the same. Even though that's a 1299 euro phone don't get me wrong.

This is a very cool phone. The ROG phone 5 ultimate comes in a much beefier package. It's a head and shoulders more exciting than what Samsung and Apple are giving with their top end phones and, unlike the base model here, you do get that proactive cooler included, but not just that when you buy a ROG phone 5 ultimate. You also get a second box, and this is possibly the most extra thing. I've ever seen come with a smartphone, we're talking a ROG towel and a snap back.

There's these Lego type building blocks to make a ROG logo from they've, got their own playing cards a sticker book and, of course, badges. It took me a while to decide how I felt about this, but then I realized wait a second. This is exactly the point I'm trying to make see. Asus cares like who even makes stuff like this. It's ludicrous, but at the same time it's very clear that they've picked one market, one incredibly niche market, the esports level, competitive, android gamer and maybe focus a little too much on it like, given what you know about the base model of the ROG phone five.

What would you improve if you were going to make a higher end model logic would dictate that all efforts should be focused on the camera, the most obviously lacking feature. No, what did they improve? Well, they added a screen on the back to show more intricate animations. They added yet another set of ultrasonic buttons for gaming, and they bumped the ram up from the arguably already excessive 16 gigabytes to 18 gigabytes. Look, I'm not saying these are bad decisions. If ASUS's only goal here was to just have the best gaming phone, then for now at least they've done that it's an extraordinary gaming phone, there's no other device on the planet with this trifecta of speakers, battery and performance.

But what's disappointing is that they were this close to a device that I could have recommended to a much wider group of people and had they spent a bit less on configurable LEDs and arguably over the top niche gaming features. We would have been there I'll finish on this note. The pricing for the base model is actually very competitive and providing you know what you're getting yourself into it's phenomenal of what it's trying to be. I couldn't see many people regretting their purchase, but just be aware, the further you go up this pricing ladder, the more laser-focused these devices become on a really, really niche group at the cost of their value proposition to everyone else. Okay, thank you.

So much for watching my name is Aaron. This is Mr who's, the boss, and I'll catch you in the next one. All right. We've had this coming. You.

Source : Mrwhosetheboss