Gaming is an excessive and exacting hobby, and few things epitomize that more than the ASUS ROG 3.
This is a smartphone for gamers, but not just any gamers. Plenty of folks idly tap away at their favorite mobile games whenever they have a free moment to do so without ever thinking about resolution and frame rates. The newest gaming phone from ASUS is not for those people. If you’re the type of person who wants to play PUBG Mobile for hours at a time at settings that would melt most other phones, ASUS is throwing you a bone.
We got a chance to test out the ROG 3, which doesn’t have a price or release date yet. There’s definitely plenty of power under the hood, but that price tag could make or break this phone whenever it launches.
Beefy specs
However much it ends up costing, that money is definitely going somewhere. The newest model in the ASUS ROG line comes with a 6.6-inch 144Hz AMOLED display with HDR10+ support that’s as vibrant and buttery smooth as those specs suggest. The 6,000mAh battery keeps things running while the maximum 16GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage ensure the phone can keep up with the competition in terms of memory.
All of that is fueled by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus 5G processor. Yes, you read that right: This phone supports 5G. I didn’t get to test that out in my hands-on time with it because I don’t really have access to 5G where I live, but that’s going to add value for some people who do. There are three total USB-C ports on the ROG 3. One is on the bottom, while the other two are interestingly nestled side-by-side on the left side of the phone. Among other things, these power the bundled AeroActive Cooler 3 accessory, which can help keep the phone from getting too hot. More on that later.
It’s got a big, nice screen, and plenty of juice to go with it.
Amateur photographers will be happy to know that there’s a seemingly respectable triple-camera system on the back of the ROG 3. The chief attraction is a 64MP main camera, which is bolstered by a 13MP ultra-wide lens and a 5MP macro lens. The raw megapixel specs compare favorably to the iPhone 11 Pro, but we’ll have to do some more testing to find out how the two really shake out. The main rear camera can record videos at 8K resolution and 30 frames per second, as well as at 4K/60fps.
So, in summary, it’s got a big, nice screen, and plenty of juice to go with it. But that’s not why anyone is here.
Mobile gaming rig
“Borderlands 3” running in Google Stadia looked very good on the 6.6-inch AMOLED display.
Image: Screenshot via “borderlands 3”
This is a gaming phone first and foremost. Just like previous ROG phones, the central feature here is Armoury Crate, an app that groups together every game you have installed into a single launching hub complete with play-time stats for each. Think of it as a mobile Steam-like interface that you have to use in landscape mode.
In fact, expect to spend a lot of time in landscape mode on the ROG 3. Most high-end mobile games are played that way, and the display is so nice it practically begs for things to be seen in a widescreen format.
Anyway, Armoury Crate also has a tab to show you things like the temperature of the CPU and GPU as well as how much RAM is being used and how much battery time you have left. This screen is also a place where you can turn on X-Mode, a performance-optimizing setting that kills background apps in order to make games hum along nicely.
Once you actually launch a game, the experience doesn’t differ that much from other phones, except you can swipe in from the left side of the screen to open the Game Genie. Older players will likely associate that name with something else, but here, it’s a menu that gives you quick access to your current frame rate, system temperature, a refresh rate toggle, macros, and a bunch of other options that serious mobile gamers will probably appreciate. This can be intimidating at first, but the ROG 3 does a pretty good job of optimizing things automatically so people who don’t want to spend all day fiddling with settings can still have a nice experience.
Game Genie is kind of overwhelming.
Image: Screenshot via “Call of duty mobile”
On ROG 3, you’ll generally have access to the highest graphical settings in games that you may not be able to use on an older, less-powerful phone. PUBG Mobile was the most impressive thing I tested because I was able to turn on the highest graphical settings and achieve something close to 60 frames per second for the entirety of a full match, which I won, by the way. It was definitely against unskilled bots, but still. Let me have this.
Call of Duty Mobile was similarly impressive, looking and running great on the ROG 3. It’s weird to see a map from a game I played on a TV and thought was gorgeous in 2007 looking just as gorgeous on a smartphone in 2020. Both games were clearly inferior on my iPhone 8, especially PUBG Mobile. Curiously, Fortnite on the ROG 3 doesn’t support the 60fps mode that Epic Games added to certain mobile versions of it a while back. I don’t blame ASUS for this, but still, it’s disappointing for a gaming phone to not run Fortnite as smoothly as it could.
I played through a whole match of PUBG Mobile with the settings maxed out… At the end, I’d only lost 10 to 12 percent of battery life.
Google Stadia is also built into the Armoury Crate interface, in case you still use it for some reason. I was able to link my Stadia controller to the phone with little effort and play Borderlands 3 for a bit. The latency was low to the point of not being noticeable and the game looked fantastic and ran at a high frame rate. Google Stadia is still a weird, incomplete package, but enthusiasts can rest assured it works very well on the ROG 3.
Probably the best thing I can say about the ROG 3 is that the battery keeps pace with all of this splendidly. I played through a whole match of PUBG Mobile with the settings maxed out, the brightness turned up to a reasonable degree, and the cooling accessory plugged in. At the end, I’d only lost 10 to 12 percent of battery life. After a couple hours of intermittently testing other games, it had only dropped to about a 70 percent charge. That’s nice.
Having said all of that, there are reasons to be concerned.
Stay cool
The AeroActive Cooler 3 is…prominent.
Image: alex perry / mashable
Remember that cooling accessory I mentioned earlier? Yeah, it’s officially known as AeroActive Cooler 3. You plug it into the two USB-C ports on the side of the phone so it can keep the ROG 3 cool with a built-in fan while you play. Conveniently, there is a USB-C port and a headphone jack on the bottom of the AeroActive Cooler when you hold the phone in landscape mode. This makes it easy to plug in controllers and headsets, of course. It also, rather essentially, has a kickstand on it. As you can see, however, it’s pretty bulky and tough to hide.
Unfortunately, this accessory feels a bit too essential. The ROG 3 can get pretty warm during extended gaming sessions, which the cooler obviously mitigates. The presence of a headphone jack on the cooler but not on the phone is especially disappointing, given that plenty of mobile gamers might like to use voice chat with wired microphones.
The other main reason to be worried is that this is sure to be a pricey handset. The addition of 5G alongside high-end specs means this could easily cross the $1,000 barrier, especially if ASUS plans on selling multiple models. At that point, a gaming laptop at a similar price point could be a more appealing option to anyone who absolutely must game on the go.
Still, the ASUS ROG 3 is an impressive piece of hardware at first glance. If nothing else, you might get a momentary jolt of energy from winning a game of PUBG Mobile at a high frame rate.