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With the release of pop competitive mobile games similar PUBG and Fortnite on mobile, there is renewed interest in "gaming phones." Devices similar the Razer Phone and Red Magic are a scrap more mainstream than onetime gaming-oriented devices like the Sony Xperia Play. They're still normal Android-powered slates, only they have high-end specs and "gamer" blueprint quirks. Asus is the latest smartphone maker to leap into this emerging market with the ROG Telephone. This phone has all the bells and whistles — in fact, it has extra bells and whistles.

Internally, the Asus ROG Phone has similar specs to other high-end smartphones. There'due south a Snapdragon 845, 8GB of RAM, one 4,000 mAh battery, and either 128 GB or 512 GB of storage. The Snapdragon flake is slightly overclocked compared with the standard version in other phones (2.96GHz versus 2.8GHz). A 6-inch OLED panel dominates the front of the phone with a resolution of 2160×1080 and HDR back up. It has an 18:9 aspect ratio similar many new phones, so information technology'll exist more comfy to hold than a Razer Phone, which has the aforementioned diagonal measurement. Although, it's just a 60Hz panel every bit opposed to 120Hz on the Razer.

The ROG Phone starts showing off its gamer cred when you look at the array of ports. There's a USB Type-C port on the bottom forth with a dedicated headphone jack. Then, you get another Type-C port on the side of the phone, which is greatly weird. This second port connects to Asus' collection of wild gaming accessories. For example, you can plug in a cooling fan attachment that keeps your telephone cool during extended gaming sessions. There's too a desktop dock, consummate with video out and multiple full USB ports.

Perhaps the strangest accessory is the TwinView Dock, which is a device that stores the phone in the top half of a clamshell case, while the lesser half houses a second 2160×1080 OLED panel. It too has controller-style grips, a fan, shoulder buttons, and a 6,000 mAh battery. It's unclear what that 2nd screen is for, though. Android apps and games don't know how to utilize dual-screen devices. Asus also plans a more than conventional game controller add together-on with thumbsticks and buttons.

Even without the controller add-ons, the ROG Phone has more gaming controls than other phones. The device contains three ultrasonic sensors within. In portrait mode, they detect squeezing to trigger actions (similar HTC's Edge Sense). In landscape, two of them human activity as shoulder buttons for use in games. The rest of the telephone's physical design is aggressively "gamer-ish" with lots of angular facets and an RGB logo on the back.

Asus doesn't have a price or a launch appointment for the ROG Phone yet. Information technology estimates some time in Q3 of this yr, but it won't even ballpark the price. I'd imagine information technology volition exist quite loftier. Information technology'll probably really own in PUBG, though.