By Vivek Singh Chauhan
New Delhi, Dec 31 (IANS) As demands for high-end mobile games continue to rise in the country, Taiwanese electronics major ASUS recently launched its first gaming-centric smartphone under its Republic of Gamers (ROG) brand in India.
The company's flagship device ROG Phone is designed for high-performance mobile gaming and smartphone experience. It was first unveiled globally at the Computex 2018 in June this year.
ROG Phone was launched on November 29 in the country for Rs 69,999.
One of the major highlights of this gaming device is its 3D vapour-chamber cooling system. As per the company, it is the world's first smartphone to be clubbed with this technology.
Let's see how it fared during the time we used the smartphone.
Looking at the design language of the device, we found it to be big, and yet stylish and aggressive that gave a perfect "powerful" look to the device.
The gaming smartphone comes with a six-inch fullHD+ (18:9 aspect ratio), AMOLED display with Corning Gorilla Glass 6. It has a refresh rate of 90Hz.
The device comes with a metal-glass body that has a plastic cooling panel on the back with copper-coloured grills. To give the gaming device some flashy lighting effects, there's a customisable RGB-lit ROG logo, that can change colours, on the back.
Of all the gaming phones available in the market, this device seems to have the best screen so far.
The volume and power buttons are placed on the right side and the primary USB Type-C port and 3.5-mm headphone jack on the bottom. It also has a regular USB Type-C port for charging the device.
The device is powered by the speed-binned 2.96GHz octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip with gaming-optimised Qualcomm Adreno 630 GPU.
It is coupled with 8GB RAM and internal storage up to 128GB. It runs Android 8.1 operating system (OS) and has ROG Gaming user interface (UI).
No lag was found even after running multiple apps in the background which also included heavy games such as Asphalt 9 and PUBG.
The device performed quite well in the battery department. It houses a 4,000mAh battery and supports Qualcomm QuickCharge 4.0 fast charging.
The phone has a unique "GameCool" vapour chamber cooling system, with detachable "AeroActive" cooler for an extra cooling boost.
It features 3D vapour-chamber cooling inside that provides larger surface area for heat dissipation than a standard heat-pipe cooling system.
This cooling system is enhanced with a copper heat spreader and carbon cooling pads on the circuit board for maximum cooling performance.
The gaming device delivered performance without overheating, which was quite overwhelming.
The AirTrigger buttons -- that uses ultrasonic technology -- on the left edge acts like shoulder buttons seen on actual game consoles.
The device's stereo speakers worked quite well.
The gaming smartphone also comes with a 12MP f/1.7 lens with Sony's IMX363 sensor and a 120-degree wide-angle camera and an 8MP shooter with f/2.0 aperture for selfies.
What doesn't work?
Not a major disappointment but this device does not have "Face Unlock" feature. A fingerprint sensor is there, but we found its slower than expected.
And nobody would mind a bigger battery as it is a gaming-centric smartphone.
Conclusion: ASUS' ROG Phone, with its rough look and powerful hardware, is here to stay until some other beast of a gaming phone overpowers it.
(Vivek Singh Chauhan can be contacted at vivek.c@ians.in)
