Asus’ ROG Cellphone II encompasses a 120Hz show, a brand new SoC, and an enormous battery

The ROG Cellphone 2. It seems to be loads just like the ROG Cellphone 1.

The again embraces the complete kiddie-gamer aesthetic.

Panorama gaming on this truly appears fairly good, with shoulder buttons and a backside cost port.

A detailed-up of the shoulder button.

That is an fascinating off-center spot for the underside USB port, and hey, there is a headphone jack.

Final 12 months the vent was faux. There isn’t any telling if its truly helpful this 12 months.

The facet USB port and Asus’s proprietary port.

The system comes with a clip-on cooling fan. Final 12 months, the fan didn’t assist with cooling.

You have to hand it to Asus, there are a variety of customized, angular elements on this cellphone.

The highest speaker grill and entrance digicam.

This 12 months, the ROG Cellphone has an in-screen fingerprint reader.

Asus continues to be making an attempt to make gaming telephones a factor with the discharge of the Asus ROG (Republic of Players) Cellphone II. Similar to final 12 months, this can be a high-end smartphone with a hyper-aggressive “gamer” design and a light-up again emblem, however there are additionally genuinely spectacular specs right here that you just will not discover on every other smartphone proper now.

The Asus Republic of Players Cellphone II is the primary system to launch with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 855 Plus SoC. This 855 “Plus” is a mid-cycle improve for the Snapdragon 855 with increased clock speeds for the CPU and GPU. The SoC’s single “Prime” CPU core will get bumped from 2.84GHz to 2.96GHz, whereas the GPU will get a 15% enhance from 585MHz to 672MHz.

You are going to want that additional horsepower for the reason that ROG Cellphone II has a 6.59-inch, 2340×1080 OLED show with a 120Hz refresh charge, which is up from 90Hz final 12 months. This is without doubt one of the quickest shows you may get on a smartphone, alongside the 120Hz show on the Razer Cellphone 2, although that’s an LCD. The 90Hz show on the OnePlus 7 Professional turned out to be one of many cellphone’s finest options even while you weren’t gaming, due to the quicker, smoother UI animations it enabled. I anticipate quicker shows to indicate up in a ton extra smartphones telephones subsequent 12 months.

The third headline characteristic to level out is the 6000mAh battery, which is completely large in comparison with most flagship telephones in the marketplace. The Galaxy S10+ has a mere 4100mAh battery. The OnePlus 7 Professional is just 4000mAh. Hopefully we’re a protracted runtime.

Different specs embrace a large 12GB of RAM, choices for 128GB of 512GB of storage, two USB-C ports, a three.5mm headphone jack, twin front-facing audio system, a 24MP entrance digicam, and twin rear cameras that includes a 48MP most important digicam and a 13MP huge angle. There’s an in-screen fingerprint reader, however no wi-fi charging, SD slot, or water resistance.

Apart from the standard show and SoC enhancements, there are some precise gaming-centric options on the ROG Cellphone II that you just will not get on different smartphones. The second USB port lives on the facet of the cellphone, which is nice for charging the system throughout a panorama gaming session with out the wire getting in the way in which of your arms. We have seen a couple of telephones with pressure-sensitive sensors in them now, and Asus makes use of them for shoulder buttons that exist on the left and proper facet of the cellphone in panorama.

Subsequent to the facet USB port is what Asus solely calls a “proprietary connector,” and the 2 ports crew as much as energy a variety of equipment from Asus. The clip-on cooling fan returns and comes bundled with the cellphone. A brand new “ROG Kunai Gamepad” seems to be like an edgy model of a Nintendo Change controller, with two controller halves that may be held individually, slid right into a controller mount, or related to the edges of the cellphone with a particular case.

Additionally returning is a brand new model of the TwinView Dock II, which mounts a second, an identical show panel to your cellphone together with an additional 5000mAh battery. It seems to be like a ROG Cellphone II with a second ROG Cellphone II connected to it. You’ll be able to Voltron the entire Asus accent package deal collectively by placing your cellphone within the TwinView Dock after which connecting the controller halves to both facet of the dock. You now have a 1.four pound handheld gaming system.

Engadget’s hands-on.” src=”https://cdn.arstechnica.web/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/asus-rog-phone-ii-1-980×613.jpg” width=”980″ top=”613″/>Enlarge / The cellphone, TwinView dock, and controller connected. For no matter purpose, Asus does not have photos of the equipment, so that is from Engadget’s hands-on.

The design is a minor evolution of final 12 months’s ROG Cellphone, and until you see them side-by-side, they’re exhausting to inform aside. The entrance of the cellphone is surprisingly generic-looking in comparison with the laser rave celebration on the again.  You get an old-school prime and backside bezel design that skips the notches, gap punches, pop-up cameras, and different 2018-2019 design motifs in favor of easy straight traces. Entrance stereo audio system sit on the prime and backside edges of the cellphone, and copper accents slightly below the audio system are the one factor that give the entrance some persona.

The all-glass again of the cellphone seems to be like it’ll rework right into a robotic any second now, and it encompasses a light-up RGB LED ROG emblem, an “aerodynamic system” vent, and the dual-camera system with crazy-angled lenses for the cameras and LED flash.

The ROG Cellphone 1 was designed to provide the phantasm of a sophisticated cooling system, with two giant copper vents on the again of the cellphone and an elective clip on fan. However these simply appeared to simply be “for seems to be” and did not truly assist a lot with the cooling. Teardowns present a painted copper plate behind the vents, and the plate lacked any sort of thermal connection to the cellphone elements (like say, thermal paste or thermal pads over the SoC). The cellphone nonetheless shipped with an precise vapor chamber cooling system, however that was deep on the within of the cellphone, behind the display. The skin was all for present.

The elective clip-on cooling fan for the ROG Cellphone 1 additionally did not do something. Just like the vents, it had no thermal connection to the recent elements of the cellphone. The fan simply blew air over the glass again, which is a poor conductor of warmth. Reviewers reported that the ROG Cellphone 1 fan did not considerably decrease the cellphone’s operating temperature, and in some instances, it truly made the cellphone run hotter.

I convey up these ROG Cellphone 1 cooling points to say “Do not consider the design!” Final 12 months, Asus had no points including utterly deceptive design parts and equipment to the cellphone, so this 12 months the corporate has earned some skepticism. The ROG Cellphone II has a brand new clip-on cooler fan that, once more, seems to be prefer it simply blows air on the again of the cellphone and does not have a thermal connection to the recent elements. There may be as soon as once more a vent on the again, however it’s even smaller this 12 months, and we’ll have to attend for teardowns to see whether it is truly associated to the cooling system.

Asus hasn’t posted official availability or pricing, however a report from Engadget says the cellphone will launch in Taiwan on August 1 for NT$26,990 ($870 USD). The Twinview Dock is NT$6,990 ($230 USD) and the Nintendo Change-like gamepad is NT3,990 ($130 USD).

Itemizing picture by Asus