ASUS Announces ROG III Phone

Today, ASUS announces its new flagship gaming-oriented phone, the ROG Phone III. As a direct successor to the fairly well-received ROG Phone II from last year, the company maintains the fairly basic formula this year, keeping the overall features of the ROG Phone III similar to its predecessor while upgrading major components like the SoC, now featuring first time on a device the new Snapdragon 865+.

The new SoC improves CPU and GPU speeds by 10%, boosting frequencies on Cortex-A77 cores up to 3.1GHz for the first time on a smartphone. ASUS says it has also vastly improved the SoC heat sink inside the phone, and is now 6 times bigger than the one found on the ROG Phone II. Combined with a revamped steam chamber design, the new phone is said to be virtually immune to thermal throttling and capable of maintaining its peak performance figures for extended periods, even in demanding situations.

The phone also updates its RAM and storage options. It can offer up to 16GB of LPDDR5 memory, while 512GB NAND storage has been upgraded to a UFS 3.1 drive, improving transfer speeds by up to 15%.

On the screen side, ASUS has maintained the same screen size and resolution as the ROG Phone II at 6.59 “and 2340 x 1080, but this time it has increased the refresh rate from 120Hz to 144Hz already high, with an increase in The input touch sampling rate up to 270Hz. Being this the most important feature of the ROG Phone II, possibly smaller updates have been seen in this generation.

Apparently, ASUS also maintains a very similar footprint across generations, as both phones are still 171 x 78mm long and wide, though the new phone appears thicker now up to 9.85mm. The weight hasn’t changed, and it still drops to 240g, largely taken up by the massive 6000mAh battery that hasn’t seen any changes in this generation, either. Like its predecessor, these are giant phones.

On the camera side, we’ve seen a huge improvement in the main camera unit that has been changed from the previous generation IMX586 sensor to a newer IMX686. The upgrade here lies in its larger sensor size of 1 / 1.72 ”, which retains 0.8 µm pixels, but is improved in resolution up to 64MP with a four Bayer color filter matrix, grouping up to 16MP for regular shooting. . At the time of writing, we have no information on the camera optics.

The ultra-wide-angle angle appears to have remained the same at 13MP with a 125 ° field of view, but again we lack detail. An addition to the camera suite is a 5MP macro camera which is generally more of a trick rather than something that increases the shooting experience.

In terms of connectivity, of course, the big update is the move to 5G thanks to the new X55 modem. Wi-Fi 6 is also the norm now and BT has been updated to version 5.1. We see no mention of ASUS ‘”wireless display” functionality with 802.11ad, so it could be that the company has removed this feature this generation.

Another great feature that has been removed is the 3.5mm headphone jack. Unfortunately, like many other vendors, this one has followed the Dodo’s path, and is only available otherwise through ASUS’s AeroActive Cooler 3 companion accessory that features a USB-C pass-through port and 3.5mm port.

Availability in Europe later this month, USA in September

The ROG Phone III is said to appear for the first time in Europe later this month in the form of a Strix variant with a regular Snapdragon 865 and 8 + 256GB of RAM for € 799, while the 12 + 512GB and 16 + 512GB variants will be offered later. for € 999 and € 1099. In the United States, the phone will only launch in September and prices will be released at a later date.

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