With the rise of mobile gaming, the demand of gaming-centric smartphones is now becoming a thing in India. We have seen multiple players like Black Shark, Nubia and more launching their gaming smartphone in the country and Asus is not far behind.
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The company introduced a new gaming-centric smartphone under its Republic of Gamers brand aka ROG in India. Dubbed as ROG Phone 2, the smartphone comes loaded with a host of interesting features, top-of-the-line hardware and it comes with an aggressive price point. The smartphone is priced at Rs 37,999 for the 8GB RAM variant, while the 12GB RAM variant is priced at Rs 39,999. So, can it be the next big sensation in this price range? Let’s find out.
Different design and fluid display
The Asus ROG Phone 2 offers a distinct design language as compared to the rest of the competition. The phone comes with a tall display with a notch-free design, which is a welcome move as it does not hinder the overall visual experience. The smartphone features a glass/metal sandwich with the front sporting Corning Gorilla Glass 6 protection.
The back panel features air vents for heat dissipation along with a dual-camera setup and two LED flash. The right side features volume controls and power on/off button and it also features AirTriggers II at the top and bottom panel. The left side features an additional USB Type-C port and a connector for attaching accessories.
The base panel also features a USB Type-C port and thankfully there is a 3.5mm audio jack. On the downside, both the panels attract a lot of smudges and you will end up cleaning quite frequently. Secondly, the phone is quite heavy as compared to the rest of the competition. The tall display sometimes makes it difficult to reach around the corner of the screen. That said, still, it is one of the most practically-designed smartphones from Asus.
Coming to the display, the Asus ROG Phone 2 is loaded with a 6.59-inch Full HD+ AMOLED Display with a screen resolution of 2340 x 1080 pixels. This is the first smartphone from Asus to come loaded with a 120Hz Refresh Rate and 240Hz response time. The 120Hz refresh rate has will spoil you! The high refresh rate makes a delightful experience when you scrolling or doing anything on the smartphone. The colour reproduction is to the point and the deep blacks are quite good. The company has also given an option to customise the screen settings and change colour temperature and more quite easily. You will certainly enjoy the gaming sessions and streaming experience on this smartphone.
Top-of-the-line performance, clean user interface
The Asus ROG Phone 2 is powered by the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ Processor along with Adreno 640 GPU. The phone is backed by up to 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of internal storage. The smartphone is a gaming beast in the true sense and it is also one of the best performers in this price segment. Whether be it daily tasks or multi-tasking, is the whole experience buttery smooth.
Coming to gaming performance, which is why the smartphone is made, it is quite amazing. The phone can handle almost all the games you throw at it. We played PUBG Mobile, Asphalt 9, Modern Combat 4 and more on this smartphone and we faced no lag or stuttering during our gameplay. The company has added Armoury Crate, which helps in providing manual controls clock speed, fan speed, Aura Sync lighting, AirTriggers, touch sensitivity and more. During our gameplay sessions, we did noticed some heating issues. If you want to know the in-depth gaming review of Asus ROG Phone 2, you can click here.
Coming to the software, the ROG Phone 2 runs on Android 9.0 Pie, which is based on ROG UI. The user interface offers a clean UX and it comes with an App drawer support. The user interface comes loaded with a host of interesting features and we particularly liked the system-wide dark mode. One can also choose between different themes including Dark Reactor Core, Light Luminous Core and Classic Theme. Bonus thing here is that when you squeeze the screen it will automatically activate X Mode which also triggers an animation on the wallpaper, icons get glowing borders and the RGB on the backfires up.
The user interface also comes with advanced settings like Mobile Manager that scans and manages things like Data usage, memory cleaner, cleanup, privacy and security. Then there is OptiFlex that accelerates app launches and reduces app reload time. Safeguard on the other hand offers SOS emergency contacts options, while Twin Apps helps in using two different profiles on different apps like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and even on PUBG Mobile.
Decent camera performance, Battery makes it a desirable option
The Asus ROG Phone 2 features a dual-camera setup at the rear panel that comes with a combination of 48-megapixel primary lens and a 13-megapixel Wide-Angle lens. For the front, the company has added a 24-megapixel selfie shooter. That said, the camera performance is quite decent in the daylight scenario as the photos came out to be crisp and the colours were close to the source. The macro shots came out to be good as well. In low light conditions, the phone shimmers a bit as we noticed some focusing issues with this one. The photos taken in low light condition came out to be satisfactory in our opinion. For in-depth camera review of ROG Phone 2, you can click here.
Let’s talk about battery performance, which also happens to be one of the major highlights of the smartphone. Asus ROG Phone 2 is backed by a massive 6,000mAh battery and it comes with the support of up to 30W fast charger. The company has bundled an 18W fast charger with the base variant, while the top-end variant comes bundled with 30W fast charger. In our testing, we used the 18W fast charger and it was fully charged within 1.5 hours. Coming to the battery performance, we got close to two days of battery backup with mixed usage that includes casual gaming, using social media apps, streaming some music and more. With heavy usage, the phone easily lasted for a full day with some amount of battery juice still left in it.