The big Asus game changer event took place earlier today and of course the Asus ROG Phone 3 was the big announcement and with it we have all the details for the companies latest flagship gaming smartphone.
The ROG Phone 3 is clearly an evolution of the ROG Phone 2 from last year and most of the upgrades are internal or feature wise. The design is mostly the same, in fact a good portion of the accessories from ROG Phone 2 will continue to work with the ROG Phone 3.
Starting with the display, we have a large 6.59″ AMOLED display with 2,340 x 1,080 resolution. This supports HDR 10-bit with 1000 nits brightness. Asus have also bumped the refresh rate to 144hz, making it one of the fast display’s avaialble. Touch response is also bumped to 240hz for extremely fast repsonse.
The overall design is very similar to last years ROG Phone 2. This includes the flat display, front facing stereo speakers. RGB ROG Logo on the rear. As we mentioned all accessories will continue to work except or the ROG 2 clip on fan, but the new version comes in the box and now features a kick stand.
Being a gaming aimed device the ultrasonic sensors have been upgraded for AirTrigger 3. This provides better support and more options such as sliding, press and hold, and 2 actions per trigger. As with previous ROG phones, it’s usage may vary for different people.
The chipset has been upgraded to the latest Snapdragon 865 Plus with higher clock speed; promising at least 10-percent jump over the Snapdragon 865. The phone will be avaialble with either 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. Already we are looking at one of the best performing smartphones in 2020. Storage also ranges up to 512GB.
A big issue fans of the ROG Phone 2 noted was the camera side of things were fairly lacking. While the phone is aimed clearly more at gaming, it still provides flagship specs in every other department, so a decent camera set is still a very important step.
So in that regard, Asus have now included a 64MP Sony IMX686 sensor for the main shooter. There is also an ultra-wide 125° camera, and lastly a 5MP macro shot. We’re hoping this will be a big improvement in quality compared to last years device.
Other specs for the ROG Phone 3 include, 5G connectivity, WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.1, USB Type C (3.1 Gen 2 with Display port 1.4), USB PD Charging (up to 30w). The battery capacity is the same at 6,000mAh.
The ROG 3 Phone is now avaialble for pre-order in Ireland starting at €999 for 12GB of RAM and 512GB storage.
Asus are also launching the ROG Phone 3 Strix edition. This will come in at €829. It’s mostly the same, but has the standard Snapdragon 865 and not the plus version. It also has 8GB of RAM and and 256GB storage.
Below the the full spec list for the Asus ROG Phone 3 and ROG Phone 3 Strix edition smartphones.
ASUS ROG Phone 3 Series Specifications
| Processor | ROG Phone 3: 3.1 GHz Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 865 Plus 5G Mobile Platform with 7 nm, 64-bit Octa-Core Processor ROG Phone 3 Strix Edition: 2.84 GHz Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 865 5G Mobile Platform with 7 nm, 64-bit Octa-core Processor |
| GPU | Qualcomm® Adreno™ 650 |
| UI | Android™ 10 with new ROG UI |
| Display | 6.59” 19.5:9 (2340 x 1080) 144 Hz / 1 ms AMOLED 10-bit HDR display 650 nits outdoor readable brightness 1,000 nits peak brightness Delta-E < 1 DCI-P3 support and 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio AMOLED display with Corning® Gorilla® Glass 6 Supports Always On Capacitive touchscreen with 10-point multitouch (supports glove touch) |
| Dimensions | 171 x 78 x 9.85 mm |
| Weight | 240 g |
| Battery | 6000 mAh typical capacity |
| Memory | ROG Phone 3: Up to 16 GB LPDDR5 RAM ROG Phone 3 Strix Edition: 8 GB LPDDR5 RAM |
| Storage | ROG Phone 3: Up to 512 GB UFS 3.1 ROM ROG Phone 3 Strix Edition: 256 GB UFS 3.1 ROM |
| Sensors | In-display fingerprint sensor, Face recognition, Accelerator, E-Compass, Gyroscope, Proximity sensor, Hall sensor, Ambient light sensor, Ultrasonic sensors for AirTrigger 3 and grip press |
| Wireless Technology | Integrated dual-band WiFi 6 (802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax 2×2 MIMO) Bluetooth® 5.1 (BR/EDR+LE), supports Qualcomm® aptX™ Adaptive WiFi Direct, NFC |
| GPS | GNSS support GPS(L1/L5), Glonass(L1), Galileo(E1/E5a), BeiDou(B1/B2a), QZSS(L1/L5) and NavIC(L5) |
| I/O Ports | Side: Custom USB-C® Supports USB 3.1 Gen 2 / DisplayPort 1.4 (4K UHD) / fast charging (PD 3.0) (30-watt) 30-watt ROG HyperCharge direct charging Bottom: USB-C® Supports USB 2.0 / fast charging (PD 3.0) (30-watt) / direct charging |
| Front Camera | 24 MP |
| Rear Camera | 64 MP (Main camera Sony® IMX686) + 13 MP (125° ultrawide-angle lens) + 5 MP (Macro) |
| Voice Wakeup | Yes |
| Speaker | Dual front-facing speakers with Dirac HD Sound Stereo speakers with dual NXP TFA9874 smart amplifier |
