The age of gaming phones is upon us with many companies trying to penetrate into the niche market of gaming smartphones. With the rise of very console-like games on mobile like PUBG, Fortnite and Call of Duty Mobile, the demand for a separate segment of smartphones designed for gaming is on the rise. The first batch of gaming smartphones that came out last year, however, were hit or miss at best. Neither of those phones managed to really justify the ‘gaming phone’ tag as most of these phones were just normal flagships with better cooling and bad cameras. We are starting to see a shift, though. Just last week, Xiaomi revealed its 2nd generation gaming smartphone called the Xiaomi Black Shark 2 which has managed to earn some great reviews. On the other side, Razer came up with a decent Razer Phone 2 as well this year.
The ROG (Republic of Gamers) brand from Asus has always been at the top of the food chain thanks to some amazing gaming-related products. Just last year, Asus released the ROG phone which actually had some legitimate features that differentiated it from the common chaff and made it a real gaming device. The secondary screen attachment along with some active cooling features turned out to be real game changers for Asus. This was the first time that an actual gaming phone was not just a normal phone with useless gimmicks but instead had features that improved the performance and the gaming experience. Now, almost one year later, it looks like things are about to get even better.
Asus ROG Phone 2 Confirmed
Qualcomm has been the industry leader in mobile SoC for many years. The company’s Snapdragon 855 is used in most flagships phone of 2019. However, yesterday, the company announced a newer beefed up version of the Snapdragon 855 called the Snapdragon 855 Plus designed specifically for gaming. The 855 Plus has increased clock speeds for both the CPU and GPU and will thus provide a 15 to 20 percent performance increase over the vanilla Snapdragon 855.
A few hours after the announcement of the Snapdragon 855 Plus, Asus also came out and announced that the Asus ROG Phone II will be the first phone to use the new SoC from Qualcomm. The phone is expected to be out in a month or two. However, we do know a few details about what the ROG Phone 2 will be capable of. First of all, the Snapdragon 855 Plus will be around 15% faster than the 855 meaning that the ROG Phone 2 will already be blazing fast thanks to the new SoC. Furthermore, the additional optimization that Asus puts into its gaming phones for heat dissipation will also help with improving the overall performance of the phone.
Leaks confirm that ROG Phone 2 will be a beast
Things aren’t just looking good on paper though as we have some real life leaked benchmark results for the ROG Phone 2. Earlier today, we got some leaked images of the GeekBench results for the Asus ROG Phone 2 and it looks like Qualcomm’s claims are actually true. On the multi-core side, the ROG Phone 2 just blasts through the benchmark getting an impressive score of 11,103 points. This is much higher than any other Android flagship we’ve seen this year as most have failed to even reach the 11k mark. However, things aren’t looking good on the single core side though with the score reaching the 3616 mark. Single core has always been a weakness for Qualcomm though and it needs to take a leaf out of Apple’s book to improve in that department.
According to the benchmark, the Asus ROG Phone 2 will have 12GB of RAM which, in hindsight, is somewhat of an overkill. Most people can’t even fully utilize 8 GB now but still having that extra future proofing is always nice.
Apart from the benchmarks, we also got some leaked images for the ROG Phone 2 that confirm some much-anticipated features on the gaming phone. The phone will come with a 120Hz display much like the Razer phone.
This will definitely help with making things look more fluid in games and other areas as well and will make good use of that extra oomph that the Snapdragon 855 plus is packing. In terms of design, it looks like Asus is going to stick to last year’s formula and make the ROG Phone 2 a robust and rugged gaming machine as well. However, it would be interesting to see if they come up with a newer thermal solution for the beast.
With the Xiaomi Black Shark 2 offering so much gaming prowess at a much lower price, will ROG Phone 2 be able to live up to its hype or will it be just another mediocre phone with good performance but subpar everything else? Let’s wait and see.