This is the ROG Phone 3 the ultimate gaming smartphone now if you've been following the smartphone market closely you're most likely aware of some of the changes that ROG has done from the first generation of the ROG phone series to the second generation rog phone just to give you a quick breakdown they've made the display faster from 90 hertz to 120 hertz.
The cpu was updated to the fastest available at the time the memory got a bump from 8 to 12 gigabytes the battery size it went from 4 000 milli amp hours to 6 000 milli amp hours the camera system got a bit of an upgrade as well from 12 megapixels to 48 megapixels and pricing for the ROG Phone 2 was around 900 which was actually pretty good considering what you were getting and now we're here in 2020 with the ROG Phone 3 and just after taking a quick glance at the specs and some of the features that asus has i proved on this phone i got to be honest this is by far the coolest most unique looking smartphone that i've personally come across.
So, let's check out what's new let's find do out what's new about the ROG Phone 3:
I'm gonna kick things off with pricing for the rog phone three now i'm not exactly sure what the official pricing is for the united states but i am aware that they're gonna be three variants of this phone starting with the strix edition that starts at 800 euros and there is a regular standard model that comes with 12 gigs of ram and 5 12 gigs of storage which is around a thousand euros.
That comes with everything that you can possibly throw at it now taking a look at the rest of specs this is again an area where asus do everything they possibly can to create a spec monster so you're getting the snapdragon 865 plus soc with 5g compatibility up to 16 gigabytes of lp ddr5 ram half a terabyte of ufs 3.1 storage dual sim support a 6 000 milli amp hour battery which is the same size as the rg phone 2. so nothing has changed there so the first thing that stood out to me just after unboxing this phone is the design i mean it's obvious it's a gaming smartphone made by ROG if you look at their notebook lineup their peripherals their graphics cards they're a class of their own and this phone sort of follows that trend you get an rgb logo at the back that's customizable through software.
There's also an aura rgb led right around the camera that shines a bright light when you install the lightning bumper case it gives you a matrix led layout that's pretty subtle but you can also customize the colors to software which is pretty cool you see this isn't your traditional flagship smartphone with a clean glass back and edge to edge display this is really designed to be practical for gamers and if you take a closer look at the ROG phone 3 and compared to the ROG Phone 2 not a lot has changed from a physical stand point the display still expands around 6.6 inches it's 1080p plus a moled hdr 10 plus certified just like the rog phone 2. however they did bump up the refresh rate from 120 hertz to 144 hertz.
It's also got a 270 hertz touch sampling rate the brightness levels have been improved as well and asus also claims that they've improved the color accuracy on this phone they say that it covers 113 dc ip3 but out of the box i did notice that it exhibits cooler tones there are different profiles that you can play around through settings and i ended up going with the standard one because the colors looked neutral to my eyes now you can change the color temperature and saturation levels to your preference of my finger it's just a beautiful combination of hardware and software.
And let's not forget that this still features a flat display so you're not getting any curves around the edges thank you so much asus for keeping it that way and you're also getting an in-display fingerprint sensor which works pretty well it's relatively as fast as the one plus 8 pro so in that area now given the gaming brand attached to the smartphone there are some features that they've improved from the rog phone too so when you're holding the phone in landscape mode where the volume and power buttons are located there are two invisible ultrasonic buttons asus is calling this the air trigger 3 technology.
Basically you can remap your touch in put the display within a gameplay to those individual buttons through game genie which is an overlay that pops up when you enter a game so that way you don't have to use your thumbs to interact with the game your two index fingers would do the job and those individual buttons come with haptic feedback as well which is really nice now with this generation of the ROG phone series asus has added support for sliding swiping and creating two partitions per button resulting in a four shoulder trigger configuration now.
The side mounted ports are cone of the signature features of the rog phone series because you can simply plugin the charging cable while gaming inland scape.
Mode so that doesn't get in the way unlike your standard smartphone charging orientation this port also acts as a hub for a variety of gaming accessories that asus will be offering like a game pad a twin view dock.
And a mobile docking station that gives you access to a bunch of usb ports land jack display ports and an sd card slot mean asus is pushing the limits of what a smart phone can achieve and actually a level beyond that and i should also mention that in the box you get this are so active cooler which again uses the side mounted port so attach the phone it has an active fan that is designed to lower the surface temperatures on the device by four degrees while boosting clock speeds on the cpu as well it also has a usb type-c pass-through port and a 3.5 mm audio jack which i think is important because as you can probably hear these fans they do get loud.
So you don't want your teammates listening to that versus your actual vocals and the other thing is that does come with a king stance so it'll be nice it's a nice little handy feature for watching movies speaking of which this phone has two front-facing speakers and they sound absolutely amazing it's by far the best sounding speakers that listened to from a smart phone and when you pair that with something like this you've got yourself like a really nice portable movie theater or home theater gonna take advantage of this setup because it pretty awesome.
Unfortunately they did remove the headphone jack on the smartphone and sure a lot of gamers might be a little disappointed with that illumination because this is a gaming smartphone after all and a lot of you most likely end up using head set to use this phone without any accessories installed it just doesn't make any sense because the ROG Phone 2 had it why would they eliminate something like this mean asus has designed this to be a gaming smartphone but they decided to eliminate one of the most crucial elements that people or gamers value keep in mind that this phone still doesn't have support for wireless charging.
And it also doesn't have an official ip rating so that all sort of makes sense because when you take a look at the internal components of the smartphone asus has packed it with layers of enhanced cooling to make sure that the soc's clock speeds stay stable during longer gaming sessions because this thing has like an actual air vent at the bottom or the top and you've got these two side ports.
As well so guess these are all some of the factors to consider which is totally understandable now after running some synthetic benchmarks Asus has implemented a few battery care options to extend its life span so in this menu you can enable slow charging limited to 10 watts and you can also set the charging limit for less battery wear over time you can also schedule charging which is a nifty little feature.
The specs of this thing packs i'd say that's pretty amazing the software experience for the most part is very close to what you get with a pixel land one plus device asus has not loaded this thing with any bloat ware applications except for armory crate which is the performance tuning app for the phone in fact when you're setting up the device they'll give users the option to choose between a gamer style them a classic stock look which is what i prefer they have a dedicated theme store if you want to expand your options you can also customize a few things within the "UI" like changing the system navigation style to either gesture based or the classic circle round and square buttons the armory crate software is like a game portal where you can choose what performance modes you'd like to enable within certain games.
There is a game library where you can launch a game or can go into scenario profiles and fine-tune different factors that affect the gameplay experience like touch sensitivity refresh rate performance network air trigger customizations key mapping macros there's just so much you can explore and then if you switch over to the console tab this is where you can enable x mode which over clocks the cpu and lets it stay consistently at higher clock speeds keep in mind that enabling x mode can affect battery life you can also adjust the fan speed of the aero active cooler system.
Lighting and that's pretty much it now i'm not really sure what software support is going to be like for the smart phone in the next two to three years because when you look at the ROG Phone 2 that phone just recently got the update to android 10 so it's definitely not going to be first in line to receive the best that google has to offer so that's something to keep in mind last but not least let's talk about the camera asus has updated their main camera with sony's new imax 686 sensor now don't confuse that with the imx 689 sensor found on the one plus 8 pro the sensors do fall into the same category but they feature different characteristics you also get a 13 megapixel ultra wide angle camera and a 5 megapixel macro camera let's start with the ultra wide it does a pretty good job with dynamic range and exposure interestingly enough compared to oneplus 8 pro noticed that the rog phone captured true life colors and it just gets white balance right there's good detail as well and it doesn't really crush the shadows that much so that's awesome switching to the main camera the rog phone struggles to maintain dynamic range even with hdr processing enabled these guys do get a bit overexposed compared to the oneplus 8 pro this phone tends to produce contrasty images by crushing the shadows a bit but to be honest i kind of like that look versus z8 pro again these are all subjective so you may end up liking one or the other but how well it was able to keep up with the oneplus 8 pro the detail is present colors don't get washed out if nitpicking i'd say that it does fiddle around with white balance here and there but overall it's actually a really good system the 24 megapixel selfie camera is great it surprisingly captures my skin tones accurately along with yielding excellent dynamic range it does soften my skin a little bit but overal li'm really happy with the results so this is the front-facing camera test on the rog phone 3. now this phone can shoot up to 8k at 30 frames per second but you do lose hdr and image stabilization but you can also shoot at 4k.
up to 120 frames per second which is awesome that is actually something that i'when ever seen from a smartphone camera which is great but yeah it's loaded with video features and the sample the footage looks really really good love the dynamic range coming out of the sensor also this is a great test for the microphone quality as well think really happy with the white balance or guess the color signs coming out of the sensor in general i think asus has really done a great job for a gaming smartphone so let me know what you guys think about it in the comments so there you guys have it everything that you need to know about the ROG Phone 3. you see this phone gives a completely different vibe and that's because this isn't your average flag ship smartphone that you'd walk into a carrier store and just buy right away it's a class of its own and that's essentially delivering the fastest most powerful android smartphone for a thousand dollars but let's not forget that this is a gaming smart phone first and that's very important for you guys to remember because it isn't something that's meant to compete with one plus or google or you know huawei's it's a gaming smartphone and you might be wondering why would you spend that kind of money on something like this while pc and console users may not see the point of mobile gaming it's a massive and growing market according to some studies it will go way beyond a hundred billion dollars this year the mobile gaming market is largely driven by countries like china india and other overseas markets and it's slowly making its way into north america as well but let's also acknowledge that a lot of this revenue is driven by in-game purchases because while a game is free to download you're gonna have to sort of pay your way through to unlock achievements or certain packs and things like that to win uh the game there hasn't been much focus on the need for higher frame rates in mobile games but as titles become more demanding higher end hardware is necessary to push developers to do more even game streaming services like geforce now offer a broader selection of titles.
If standard android games aren't your thing now can this be used as a mini console 2 by plugging in a bluetooth controller and out putting to a display via type c to an hdmi adapter well this could be an interesting option especially for someone who might not be able to have a pc or console but still wants to play on a bigger display so that's it for me guys let me know what you guys think about the ROG Phone 3 in the comments in fact if you are in the market for an android flagship smartphone would you consider getting a gaming smartphone or would you just completely eliminate that off your list i'm curious to know thank you so much for reading this post and i'll talk to you guys in the next one .
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