Asus has launched their third generation of ROG gaming phone on 22nd of July.Asus has introduced their first gaming phone,the ROG phone in 2018. Despite being not that great Asus came back strong with their gen 2 ROG Phone which included all the killer specs a gamer needed, now they have stepped up even more and ticks all the boxes of specs a gamer could ask for.
The ROG Phone 3 packs in a the same 6.59 inch Full HD+ Amoled display with a resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels but it is now HDR 10 and HDR 10+ certified.The display is made using the new Corning Gorilla Glass 6.The refresh rate is now 144Hz with 1ms response rate and 270Hz touch sampling rate.Honestly the difference of 120Hz and 144Hz is not quite noticeable but Asus want to throw in all the high end hardware on every aspect thus making the best gaming phone till date.The top and bottom bezels are still there.This display can get upto 1000 nits on peak brightness.
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| Asus ROG 3 (Source: Asus) |
Design & Display:
The Asus ROG Phone 3 comes with a similar design with same size and same weight as the previous gen ROG phone but with some major changes.All the fancy glowing sharp lines are now gone leaving a smooth single line and some lines on the corner of the back.The air chamber is way more subtler and smaller than the previous gen model and has a transparent glass with vents next to it to see the inner design of heat sink.The back is now made using of a smooth glass instead of the textured glass from ROG 2.The classic ROG RGB logo on the back is still there.Overall they made the ROG 3 way more cleaner by leaving all the unique and aggressive looks of ROG 2.The thickness of this phone is 9.85 mm and weighs around 240 gm.These are the things you can't really complain about, as it specifically built for gamers and gamers pretty much require the best of all the hardware to get those extra frames and have smooth experience without any heating issues.The front looks exactly the same as ROG 2.
The ROG Phone 3 packs in a the same 6.59 inch Full HD+ Amoled display with a resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels but it is now HDR 10 and HDR 10+ certified.The display is made using the new Corning Gorilla Glass 6.The refresh rate is now 144Hz with 1ms response rate and 270Hz touch sampling rate.Honestly the difference of 120Hz and 144Hz is not quite noticeable but Asus want to throw in all the high end hardware on every aspect thus making the best gaming phone till date.The top and bottom bezels are still there.This display can get upto 1000 nits on peak brightness.
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Hardware & Performance:
Processor and Memory:
The ROG Phone 3 houses in the latest Snapdragon 865+ processor, which is clocked at 3.1GHz ,combined with Adreno 650 GPU thus making itself the first device to ever come with SD 865+.Now comes the interesting part the maxed out variant of ROG 3 comes with a whopping 16 GB LPDDR5 RAM and 512 GB fast UFS 3.1 ROM.We have seen 512 GB of storage in other flagships but 16 GB of RAM is nuts!!.There are also other variants which come with 8GB+128GB and 12GB +256GB.
Battery:
It comes with the same massive 6000 mAh battery but Asus had claimed that they had made some internal tweaks to make battery life better than previous gen.It comes with a 30W hyper charger in the box.Generally every fast charger charges the battery the quickest in the initial 50-60% of battery so technically you can get up-to 3000 mAh- 4000 mAh depending on the present battery in just few minutes.One thing that is completely unique about battery charging is that you can actually decrease the charging rate to 10 W and even set a limit to the charge percentage(80% and 90%) via settings to increase the life span of the battery.This is that one feature other smartphone manufacturers must copy.
Connectivity,Cooling and Sound:
It is 5G capable and has quad Wi-Fi antennas for batter connectivity.The liquid cooling system is now upgraded which include a Copper 3D vapor chamber and large graphite cooling pads for internal cooling and has a larger heat sink and more vents to dispatch maximum heat.This device packs in dual front firing loud stereo speakers with DIRAC tuning and dual NXP Amplifiers.It is also Hi-Res Audio Certified.These stereo speakers are excellent and can easily be crowed as the best stereo speakers of all time.Bluetooth Audio is powered by Qualcomm aptX. Now comes the saddening part the ROG Phone 3 doesn't come with a headphone jack even though they provide a dongle inside the box removing headphone jack is quite disappointing.The device also features quad microphone setup(side,top,bottom and back) which will give effective noise cancellation in both horizontal and vertical uses.
Gaming Features:
It also comes with the dual USB-C ports, one on the side and other on bottom(off-centered).Asus has also upgraded their air triggers to gen 3 which bags in dual partition functionality.These Air Triggers 3 still lack haptic feedback which is ok for racing games but it is not that great when playing first person or third person shooters like Pubg mobile and Fortnite.It still has got the enhanced X-mode,Armory Crate and GameGenie for better gaming experience.This device also comes with AreoActive Cooler 3 which cools the device even more and has headphone jack,USB-C ports built into it.
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Camera:
It is the part which is not that exiting.On paper it comes with a triple camera setup on the back, a 64 MP wide, Sony IMX686 camera sensor, a 13 MP ultra wide with 125 field-of-view and a 5 MP macro camera.It takes decent images in day light and struggles in low light.The dynamic range is not good.The images from wide angle and macro are softer.Now coming to the front it has a 24 MP camera.Overall the camera is pretty much mediocre, but who buys a gaming phone for camera right? With all the killer specs Asus is offering camera is not a big deal.
Now coming to the video it can capture upto 8K 30fps and 4K 60fps thanks to SD 865+.
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| Camera Specs (Source: Flipkart) |
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The Pricing: The ROG Phone 3 is priced at Rs.49,999 for 8GB and 128GB variant and Rs.57,999 for 12GB and 256 GB variant.The top end variant with 16GB Ram and 512GB Rom is not available in India. The sale starts starts on 6th of August exclusively on Flipkart.com
