Asus has been packing bleeding edge specs into gaming smartphones since 2018, but the new ROG Phone 8 is the first to feature an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance. It’s also the company’s first gaming phone with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor.
Other features include a 6.78 inch, 165 Hz FHD+ AMOLED display, LPDDR5x-8533 memory, UFS 4.0 storage, and a mini LED “AniMe Vision” LED light display on the back of higher-priced ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition and ROG Phone 8 Pro models.
While last year’s ROG Phone 7Â also had a 165Hz display, the new model has a brighter screen with up to 2500 nits peak brightness (up from 1500 nits), as well as support for adaptive refresh rates between 1 and 120 Hz.
The new phone is also 15% thinner than the ROG Phone 7 and the latest version of tee optional AeroActive Cooler X clip-on cooler is 29% smaller, but Asus says it “offers 1.2X higher thermal efficiency.”
Other features include a 5,500 mAh battery, support for 65W fast charging with a USB-C cable or 15W wireless charging, and support for up to 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.
The phone has an in-display fingerprint sensor, support for WiFi 7, Bluetooth 5.3, NFC, and a 3.5mm audio jack plus a pair of AirTriggers.
Models with the AniMe Vision display feature a 351-element display that can show preset or user-defined animations. And if you’re not using it, the screen is basically invisible, blending in with the back of the phone and making the ROG Phone 8 look more like a smartphone that wasn’t designed for gaming.
While gaming phones tend to have high-performance hardware when it comes to CPU, graphics, memory, storage, battery, display, and sound, Asus is also emphasizing camera capabilities for this year’s model, thanks to a 32MP front-facing camera and a rear camera system that includes:
- 50MP primary camera with Sony IMX890 sensor and 6-axis hybrid gimbal stabilizer
- 13MP ultra-wide camera
- 32MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and optical image stabilization
The ROG Phone 8 comes in black or grey color options, while the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition and ROG Phone 8 Pro come in black. All three models measure 164 x 77 x 9mm (6.5″ x 3″ x 0.4″) and weigh 225 grams (7.9 ounces).
The Asus ROG Phone 8 will be available this spring, with pre-orders opening in February. Prices start at $1100:
- ROG Phone 8 (16GB/256GB) for $1100
- ROG Phone 8 Pro (16GB/512GB/AniMe Vision display) for $1200
- ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition (24GB/1TB/AniMe Vision display) for $1500
I have a gaming laptop that has a robust cooling system with four vents. I’ve pushed my system to the limits, and while the fans sound like a jet engine, it doesn’t over-heat.
Put high-end components in a phone, and push it to the limits, and it will get so hot you can’t hold it. Which is dangerous, because you don’t want to overheat batteries, obviously.
While I think it’s cool to have a phone like this, I’m wondering, what are they doing for cooling?
I’ve never had a phone overheat like that and run chess engines locally on my CPU full blast. The budget phone maybe gets warm to the touch and the phone has no active cooling measures such as fan. etc. This is after the phone’s CPU has been calculating positions nonstop for over an hour.
This leads me to wonder what the heck kind of resource intense games are you people playing on a phone? Are you hooking the phone up to a large display so you can actually enjoy playing the game or looking at the tiny smartphone display the entire time?
Well, I get what you’re saying, but you did say it’s a budget phone. This one like other gamer phones have a high-end Snapdragon 3, and they do get hot.
I remember that one article posted here not long ago about a gaming phone with an active cooler you can attach.
While I admit, I did mock it at the time, in reality, I can see why it might be necessary. The manufacturers know it too.
How can I game on my ROG phone?
1: start a game on your ROG phone
2: play the game
3: congratulations, you are doing it!