While speaking with Digit during the launch event of the Asus Zenfone 5Z smartphone, Shen confirmed that the “game-changing” ROG Phone will launch in India in the third quarter of this year. Since the third quarter of 2018 has already begun this month, eager Indian buyers can expect to lay their hands on the gaming smartphone within the next three months, he said,
“For sure, we will launch the ROG phone here in India. I cannot tell you the exact date, but it will arrive in Q3. It is already Q3, so we have three months to do so.”
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Asus ROG Smartphone: Specifications
Asus has spared no top end feature for the gaming smartphone. The company has always reserved its coveted ROG label for the very best in gaming. The Republic Of Gamers sticker is essentially synonymous with hardcore gaming. Only the most high-end gaming peripherals, high-performance computers, and the top-end graphics cards sport the ROG badge. With the ROG phone, Asus has now added smartphones to the highly reserved list of devices with ROG labelling.
The ASUS ROG smartphone features a taller, 6-inch OLED screen with Full HD+ resolution (1080×2160 pixels) and a 90Hz refresh rate for smoother visuals. Apart from an astounding 1 millisecond response time, the display has an impressive 108.6% DCI-P3 colour gamut coverage, and a 10000:1 contrast ratio. The Asus ROG Phone is one of the rare mobile devices capable of playing back HDR content, thanks to a discrete image processing chip. The display is sensitive enough to recognize input through gloves.
The powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor powers the smartphone. Incidentally the SoC has been specifically tuned for high-end gaming. The 845 is over clocked to 2.96 GHz (compared to 2.8GHz). The powerful CPU is paired with Adreno 630 GPU. In essence, users can experience flawless mobile gaming and multimedia playback on this device. The gaming smartphone packs a whopping 8 GB of LPDDR4 RAM. The smartphone will ship with either 128 GB or 512 GB of UFS 2.1 internal storage.
One of the coolest features is the GameCool system. Essentially a vapour-based cooling technology, the GameCool system offers significantly improved thermals using a copper heat spreader and 3D vapour chamber to transfer heat away from the processor and into the body effectively. If that’s not all, there’s also an optional AeroActive Cooler that can blow off air from the phone’s back panel to improve heat dissipation.
Asus ROG Phone: Price and Availability
The Asus Phone packs gaming optimized features like GameCool system, X mode, Gamevice controller, Mobile Desktop Dock, TwinView Dock. A large 4000 mAh battery pack powers the device. Its dimensions are 158.80 x 76.20 x 8.60 (height x width x thickness), and the device weighs 200.00 grams. The smartphone has all the necessary sensors and connectivity options that high-end devices pack. Hence the smartphone certainly won’t be cheap. Speaking about the price of ROG Phone, Asus CEO said,
“The consumers here are not like the ones in the US. Indian consumers are reasonable and care about the value and the features. Definitely, ROG will be priced higher than the Zenfone 5Z.”
The two statements seem contradictory to each other, but therein lay the clues about the pricing of Asus ROG Phone. The 8 GB RAM variant of Zenfone 5Z is listed at Rs. 36,999. As mentioned, Asus will price the ROG Phone higher than the Zenfone 5Z. Moreover, given the top-end specifications and hardware that the device packs, industry insiders speculate the smartphone might command a sticker price exceeding Rs. 60,000. As with Asus devices, this gaming smartphone should be primarily available online.
