In addition to the terrible configuration, ROG Phone also owns many special features, but is that enough to erase the “gaming phone is not equal to iPhone” stereotype that has existed for a while? Gaming phone – a smartphone dedicated to gaming appeared from mid-2017 and began to have specific products in 2018. Prominent in the gaming phone village are names like Xiaomi Black Shark, Razer, Pocophone… Therefore, these smartphones only focus on hardware configuration, but do not really invest in the user’s gaming experience software. At the Computex 2018 exhibition held in Taiwan, Asus’ sub-brand Repuplic of Gamers (ROG) launched ROG phone, a smartphone dedicated to mobile games. Up to now, this mobile phone has just been released in Vietnam. ## Optimized design for gaming It can be said that this is a well-invested product of ROG. However, the features and configuration of this product are a bit excessive in the spirit of a gaming smartphone. ROG phone embodies the gamer spirit from the looks of it. The back is made of glass. The decorative lines are strong and sharp. The ROG logo on the back can sync and customize the pretty eye-catching RGB colors. The trade-off for the sleek design is the slippery feeling when holding the device to play games. When running heavy games, the machine has a temperature of over 35 degrees Celsius. Even though it supports an external fan, it still makes gamers’ hands sweat, making it difficult to hold the device. The temperature issue is the thing that needs to be addressed by ROG most if it wants to make a gaming phone. The left side of the device is equipped with dual USB-C ports. This is the part that sets ROG phone apart from regular gaming smartphones. With this device, gamers can connect more gaming accessories. Besides, when holding the device horizontally playing games, players can still charge without getting stuck in their hands. In addition to the Aeroactive cooling fan that comes with the machine, users can also buy many other accessories such as dual monitors, gamepads and various hubs to connect to this dual USB-C port. The right side of the device is the AirTrigger sensor area. With this sensor, gamers can assign two buttons L1 and R1 to touch positions on the screen. So in addition to swiping, players can click on the top edge. This feature is suitable for multi-tasking games, especially Mobile Union and PUBG. In combat, players can perform quick maneuvers… AirTrigger feature also supports saving touch position according to the profile of each different game and disables when the player exits the game. ROG phone features dual front-facing speakers for good listening quality when playing games. Players can distinguish well the direction of sound in the game. ## Redundant configuration with mobile games The formula of Android gaming smartphones is usually the latest chip (Snapdragon 845), RAM over 6 GB and memory capacity over 64 GB. After all, that is the highest configuration limit that an Android smartphone can reach. With ROG on the other hand, it works directly with Qualcomm to get the fastest Snapdragon 845 chip in the Android smartphone world with 4 cores clocked at 2.96 GHz and 4 cores clocked at 1.7 GHz. Besides, ROG phone is equipped with an AMOLED screen with 90 Hz refresh rate, 1 ms delay. This is the fastest AMOLED screen on the smartphone market. However, this screen scanning speed seems redundant when viewed on a small screen area and hand operation can not meet up. The same thing happened when phone companies competed to make 4K screens, both consuming battery and difficult to feel the difference. In addition, ROG does not forget about professional gamers. The device integrates game streaming on YouTube and Switch platforms. Gamers can stream the gameplay or record it for playback. At the same time, the design of the receiver, the user interface is also taken care of by ROG to best suit the gaming and viewing habits of gamers. ## Is mobile game still mobile? ROG phone is a phone for gamers. Those who are willing to spend money to dominate in mobile games. However, it is this “pay to win” that will make mobile games lose their inherent mobility. On the small area of smartphones, mobile games are by nature not too heavy on accuracy and high speed. Besides, being able to use the keyboard, mouse, and connect to the phone to play also makes mobile games at risk of becoming boring, losing the “play anywhere” nature of mobile games. If you really need to play with the mouse and keyboard, the Android emulator solution has existed for a long time. However, the gaming community is not very excited about this “weird” self-made advantage. In fact, without self-branding as a gaming phone, the iPhone is the most popular among gamers. The machine has the ability to operate stably with the configuration is not weak. However, what makes the iPhone sympathetic among gamers is the support of application developers. Running on a device-specific operating system, iPhone has always been optimized by game developers for hardware. This is a big barrier for Android mobile companies to break if they want to become a real gaming smartphone. As for ROG Phone, because it’s optimized for gaming, the other aspects of this mobile phone such as photography – video recording or the feeling of using everyday features will not be compared with high-end smartphones on the market. . That is the price that a gamer choosing ROG Phone needs to consider to trade.
