Asus’ new ROG Phone 3 claims to be the pinnacle of smartphones if you’re serious about gaming and have the fastest specs. The device features a 6.59-inch OLED HDR color calibrated display that has a fast refresh rate of 144Hz with a response time of 1ms. It is powered by Snapdragon 865 Plus chipset with 5G support, and can be configured with up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 ROM storage. Both specifications push the limits of what we’ve seen so far on a phone. Lastly, the ROG Phone 3 features a large 6,000 mAh battery, just like last year’s model.
The ROG Phone 3 is sure to be great for normal phone things like surfing the web, texting, and making calls. But where it really stands out, aside from the specs, is with its game-specific design features, which I’m happy to report that they’re still a bit weird but still pretty cool. There’s still a side-mounted USB-C port, so the charging cable can be kept away while playing in landscape mode. It will even be compatible with Google Stadia when it launches.
Asus claims to have made improvements to the ultrasonic AirTrigger pressure-sensitive touch sensors located around the edges of the phone that mimic the experience of using a real controller. (If you’re not familiar with that, check out my review of Xiaomi’s Black Shark 2 for a full breakdown.) Asus also gives gamers more room to customize the control scheme to their liking. Added a swipe gesture to each button for a secondary command and a double partition button emulation on the AirTriggers that essentially mimics having physical L1 / L2 and R1 / R2 buttons on the phone (you can see that in the upper right of the image below). It also adds the option to assign an in-game command, such as reloading your weapon, when you shake the phone.
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Typically, Asus is rolling out a whole range of accessories that you can buy to help you harness the power of the phone even further. A TwinView Dock 3 is coming that adds another display to the mix for multitasking, and a mobile desktop dock that lets you dock the phone and use it with a keyboard and mouse. As I discovered with last year’s ROG Phone 2, it can be expensive to buy these accessories, but they are generally well built and additive to the experience.
Asus also plans to release some accessories later in 2020 to complement the ROG Phone 3, although they seem useful in contexts beyond the phone. The ROG Strix XG16 is a 15.6-inch portable gaming monitor with an IPS panel and a 144Hz refresh rate. The ROG Cetra RGB are in-ear gaming headsets with active noise cancellation and USB-C connectivity. Lastly, the ROG Falchion is a wireless mechanical keyboard that has a touchpad that you can customize. Asus claims the keyboard will have 400 hours of battery life.
The ROG Phone 3 will launch in the US this September and Asus has yet to share a price. Its predecessor was $ 899.99, so given annual increases in specs and other feature enhancements, it’s expected to hit the $ 1,000 line.
