Computex: ASUS ROG Phone Announced - Nintendo Switch-like Gaming Phone

At Computex 2018, ASUS has announced their gaming smartphone, the ROG Phone:

Specs:

• 6 inch / 2160x1080 / AMOLED / 90 Hz refresh / 1 ms response / 108.6% DCI-P3 / HDR support
• Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 @2.96 GHz (speed binned / overclocked)
• 8 GB LPDDR4X
• 128 GB or 512 GB UFS 2.1
• Rear camera - 12 MP+ 8 MP (wide angle)
• Front camera - 8 MP
• 802.11ad / Wi-Fi Direct / WiGiG wireless display support / Bluetooth 5.0 / NFC
• GPS / aGPS / Glonass / BeiDou
• Dual front facing stereo speakers
• USB-C (bottom) / 3.5 mm (bottom) / custom USB-C (side)
• Rear fingerprint sensor / 2x Air Triggers (ultrasonic shoulder triggers)
• 4000 mAh battery

ASUS has also made a number of accessories for the ROG Phone:

• Gamevice controller / WiGiG Dock
• Desktop dock
• TwinView controller
• Active cooling clip

No word on pricing yet, but it's coming in Q3 of this year.

Looks to be very expensive with limited phone carrier selection

Boring

Wonder when these manufacturers will understand until they get Nintendo-quality games, their systems will be pointless.

I don't get this pointless shit. The best looking phone/tablet game is still probably shadowgun and its like 6+years old. They built it for tegra 2+ hardware so it looks good. This doesn't happen anymore because there is no money in it. Making simple games for a phone sells, no dev team would make a game to run at 90fps with HDR support for a beast phone no one can afford. It wont have games to make it worth the purchase, yet we keep seeing these gaming phones with no games to play on it.

Doesn't have the name "Nintendo" on it = fail.

It has a nice design, but will it have a good battery life?

Waste of time and money, honestly... mobile market don't have any games that would require such specs to run at their best (most intermediate tier phones can run anything on the playstore/app store flawlessly, lbr). It isn't worth it for devs to do games that won't be able to run on any 100$ handset, why would they do that? Spend a few millions on a device that will sell less than a Sega 32X.

This is where all consoles are headed over the next decade but please, Razer and now ASUS are primarily doing this to show that they can. There is no grand strategy to challenge staple gaming devices.

Phone games suck.

I would be interested if there were tons go games worth playing, outside of kotor there isn't much else.

That looks really cool.

If it gets some nice games on it I might be interested but honestly Switch still looks more enticing to me.

Its going tô fail

Hands-on video:

What's the point when phone games fucking suck, though?

This is a dumb and probably expensive product.

That looks slick! Will it primarily play games from the Play store?

Because emulators!

I don't see this doing well. The controllers for it are ugly and phones don't really have that many games that really require joysticks.

Will be waaay too expensive $$$$$ to be mainstream..so yea won't be selling well...lol so many optional stuff that is also gonna be expensive. :P

ASUS keeps stepping up it's game, the PC-like set up is pretty impressive.

Asus should acquire the rest of HTC, and get more aggressive with smartphones. They should've done it years ago.

They're both from Taiwan and they both like making metal phones.

@PCgameruk: There might be a market for it in Japan? Certainly there's more buzz about mobile gaming there.

Platinum Games' new action title is a mobile exclusive which might benefit from a device like this. It's called World of Demons.

... and it can play what, phone games? LMAO!

How many sheep will call it console i wonder ... I dont see any yet haha. Daaaamn, i love system wars.

Anyways, it looks dope but it needs more than that to have a massive appeal, aka great exclusive games to even think to rival Switch. Other than that 90hz and 1ms ? Daaamn me, thats impressive along with everything else this offers.

This console looks awesome , i mean cellphone... Or we can call it whatever we feel like to ? .... hahaha! I love sheep to death.

@AzatiS: I guess it's the mobile phone market's answer to a game console will all the requirements to have a game console-like experience from a mobile phone. A bit like the Nokia NGage but on a whole new level. (Let's face it, the NGage was terrible... :( )

Wonder what it's gonna be priced at.

@R10nu: Wow that gaming bucket is a bargain! It will also make me better at pissing from my desk while I'm playing Fortnite.

while i do agree, there are millions fans of pubg and fortnite that'll probably get this soleley for those games.

No no, its a console it plays on TV ! lol...

I dont know, im not into handheld gaming, i never was so i cant be too sure about it. But 90hz and 1ms on the go its quite impressive as far as tech goes for a handheld gaming device. Let alone all other specs.

I wonder what the heck the price for this will be. Lacking exclusives, let alone of Nintendo caliber , i dont see how this will be able to compete with Switch, whatever the specs. So people that think so should just forget that, besides its not a head to head competitor to Switch even if on paper there are alot of similarities.

But who knows, mobile phone market is huge. With the right price and marketing, as far as sales go, anything can happen i guess. Though i dont see this will be cheap enough for worldwide appeal. Lets see.

same problem as the razor phone.

awesome specs (switch smashing....er..at least on the CPU front. im not sure on the GPU). woeful to play games on. rubbish games selection (the games best designed for such a device can run on a 200 quid phone no bother).

i really want a proper gaming phone though. this weekend i will be travelling but i wont be bringing a backpack. so bringing a switch, vita or 3DS is not practical. none are pocket friendly and my pockets will already be used to store my phone, keys and wallet. i would love if my phone actually had some good games to play on it and a good control setup for those games.

its just a shame all the manufacturers keep missing the bloody point.

The Snapdragon 845's Adreno 630 GPU is more powerful than the downclocked Maxwell GPU on the Tegra X1. It's even more powerful than the regular clocked Tegra X1 in the Shield TV.

@AzatiS: I have no idea. The whole naming thing has gotten crazy lately.

Regarding the device itself, it looks maaaad slick. Like really premium stuff. I'd be all over it for the right price. Maybe there is a market for it in Japan since mobile gaming there goes beyond the more casual stuff we see in the West. I'm not sure there is as big a market here though. Most people are mainly interested in free to play games on their phone here and not games that would take advantage of the tech on offer here.

Like you suggest, I think it's up to ASUS to talk to developers and get exclusives that show off the devices capabilities.

so it is. i thought maybe in docked mode the switches GPU may have an edge. but nope (though im assuming all the figures i saw were FP32. the adreno page on wikipedia didnt specify). man that adreno core packs quite a punch per ALU.

Stupid waste of money for pointless microtransaction cell phone games.

Good points. For a reason, i dont know why, i dont see this as a Switch competitor. Yes they do similar things and similar approach how you play games, some might say its exactly the same .. but i cant see those two as competitors.

@AzatiS: I'd say it's mostly intent of purchase, right?

Anyone buying a Nintendo Switch is buying it to play games. It basically can't do anything else. :P

Whereas a phone? Well not everyone who buys a phone is interested in gaming, and certainly wouldn't take advantage of the full suite of features on offer here.

So they have the challenge of selling a phone who's primary selling point is gaming. Are the games good enough to warrant the price of the phone? That's what they gotta accomplish.

Nice. Is the 630 like double or triple the performance of the one in the Switch?