Asus has announced two new devices in its gaming-focused Republic of Gamers phone line, the ROG Phone 6 and the ROG Phone 6 Pro. These are gaming phones for gamers who love to game, and the upgraded displays look pretty impressive.
Both models are powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor and come with up to 512GB of storage. They have 6.78-inch OLED screens, the same size as the previous ROG Phone 5S, but their 165Hz refresh rates and 720Hz touch sample rates are significant improvements over the last model. They have 6,000 mAh batteries, the same as the previous models, and an improved triple-camera setup. The Phone 6 will start at €999 and the 6 Pro at €1,299 — they’re due to launch in the UK and Europe first, with Asus saying they’ll come to the US, India and elsewhere later.
The ROG Phone 6 is available in black and white, while the 6 Pro is only available in white. The biggest difference between the two models is the second OLED screen on the back of the 6 Pro, which looks cool but is generally not very practical. You can also get a bit more RAM on the Pro model — the Phone 6 comes with 16GB of storage, but the Pro will go up to 18GB. Suffice to say, the regular Phone 6 model will probably be enough for most people.
Asus is clearly trying to create a phone that you can also use as an everyday device; the company has been slowly refining the ROG Phone’s design over the past few models so that it doesn’t scream “gamer phone!” quite loudly. But this is still a phone for gamers. Much of the phone’s design is about optimizing cooling, for example, and the phrase “we’ve developed a unique 360-degree CPU cooling technology” was definitely spoken during the product announcement stream. (The vapor chamber is now 30% larger!) Asus has even updated the Aeroactive Cooler accessory, which is actually just a huge clip-on fan that doubles as a simple controller for playing games.
The phone’s specs are impressive as always, especially the display’s refresh rate and response. But as usual with ROG phones, the question is: to what end? You don’t need 18 GB of RAM to play even the most complex Android games. Asus also has a pretty spotty history of timely software updates and only promises two years of Android and security updates for these devices. For this price, you can probably find a device that does most phone things better. And even when cloud gaming brings more powerful games to your smartphone, you just don’t need as much power on the device for them to work well. The ROG Phone 6 is a great device, but it still doesn’t look very practical.
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