The ROG Phone 6 and ROG Phone 6 Pro, two new gaming smartphones from Asus, were unveiled on Tuesday. They have the most recent Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor and a Samsung AMOLED display with a 165Hz refresh rate. In addition to the phones, the AeroActive Cooling 6 accessory that clips onto the line guarantees to lower temperatures from the back of the phone by up to 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees F) and add tactile shoulder buttons for gaming.
A 6,000 mAh battery with 65-watt charging is also included in both phones, along with extra sensors that add gaming controls via the phone’s gyroscope and along the phone’s corners. A 50-megapixel primary camera, a 13-megapixel ultrawide camera, and a 5-megapixel macro camera are all included in each device. The front cameras on both phones are 12 megapixels.
The storage and memory configurations of the standard 6 and the 6 Pro are where the main differences lie: The 6 has an initial storage capacity of 256GB and comes in models with 8GB and 12GB of RAM, while the 6 Pro has 512GB of storage and 18GB of RAM. On the back of the Pro, there is a second display that can show notifications, system data, and animations. Instead, the 6 gets a customizable LED logo that changes color to light up depending on the situation.
All of these specifications, like those of other gaming phones, are designed to prioritize speed and power in order to maximize the gameplay experience from Android games. Particularly noteworthy is the battery, which matches the Asus ROG Phone 5’s 6,000-mAH capacity from the previous year. According to CNET’s Patrick Holland, that phone has one of the longest battery lives we’ve seen on an Android phone, which was made possible by two 3,000-mAh batteries. However, the 144Hz screen on last year’s phone and the 165Hz screen on this year’s phone may have an impact on how quickly a charge is depleted.
Animations should run very smoothly on a screen with a refresh rate of 165 Hz, especially in games that can support it. Only a few Android games currently support that, as most phones have a refresh rate cap of 120Hz, I discovered during my review of the RedMagic 7, which also has a 165Hz refresh rate. For the majority of people, 120Hz is more than smooth enough, but 165Hz does bring out a little bit more detail in what you can see for the gaming crowd this phone is aimed at.
Although release dates aren’t yet known, the ROG Phone 6 and 6 Pro will have starting prices of $1,000 and $1,300, respectively, in the US. For the time being, the phones will first be available in Europe for 999 euros for the 6 and 1,299 euros for the Pro. They are now priced above last year’s ROG Phone 5, which began at 799 euros, and are officially in flagship territory.
Although we won’t be able to examine the phone’s Snapdragon processor until we get a hands-on, this newest processor and the higher refresh rate on a Samsung-made display are intriguing because they both may appear in more widely available phones in the future.
