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Asus upgrades its ROG gaming phone with a faster CPU and a color rear display
The ROG Phone 5s and 5s Pro will be released next month
Asus' bombastic ROG Phone 5 is only five months old, but it's already getting a mid-cycle refresh. Say hello to the ROG Phone 5s and 5s Pro, which look very nearly identical to the original. That's because they are: aside from a slight bump with the latest Snapdragon 888+ chipset and a marginally improved 360hz touch sampling rate on their 144Hz AMOLED screens, they're pretty much the same. The 5s sticks with the decorative dot matrix RGB graphics on the rear, while the 5s Pro (above) upgrades the black-and-white rear screen from the ROG 5 Ultimate to a new color OLED display.
That super-expensive Snapdragon-branded smartphone is now available for pre-order
All that power doesn't come cheap
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Your Android phone is probably powered by one of Qualcomm's processors. Whether it's the high-end Snapdragon 888 or the gaming-focused 780G, the company powers countless mobile devices without much competition. If you've always wanted to own a Qualcomm-branded phone, however, today's your lucky day. Created in partnership with Asus, the new "Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders" is now available for pre-order.
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There's no doubt that the Asus ROG Phone 5 is a beast — as a gaming phone, it packs all of the latest and greatest hardware, and that makes it a really chunky boy. Asus has a laser focus on gaming-centric features that will delight its core demographic, but the ROG 5 isn’t a complete nightmare to use outside of gaming either. The ROG Phone 5 offers stable everyday use with the added benefit of killer specs that can be tweaked and adjusted like a gaming PC. This is indeed a phone for gamers, but that means it lacks some popular features, and the software has some rough edges. It might be the right phone for the right person, but it’ll be a tough sell for most with an asking price in excess of $1,000.
With super-sized batteries, high-refresh displays, and powerful specs designed to push mobile graphics as hard as possible, it's no wonder gaming phones have become popular choices among many users. If you've had your eyes on the ROG Phone 5 since it launched earlier this year, you're in luck. It's finally on sale in the US directly from Asus for $999.99.
Here are the latest phones to officially support Google's 3D animals
ARCore is augmenting reality since 2018
After accidentally teasing a few upcoming phones before removing them again earlier this year, Google has published a proper update to its ARCore support page, revealing that the augmented reality library is now supported by 24 more devices. This time around, all of them have already been announced.
The Asus ROG Phone 5 is one of the most powerful phones you can buy today, but all that performance doesn't come cheap. You'll have to shell out more than $1,000 to get your hands on one, which makes durability that much more important. Asus didn't hold back on making its design as large and chunky as necessary to fit in a Snapdragon 888, 16GB of RAM, and dual 3,000mAh batteries at each end of the phone. Unfortunately, if you thought a phone as bulky as the ROG Phone 5 would hold up decently in a durability torture test, well — brace yourself.
Last-minute ROG Phone 5 renders show off some stylish changes, including a new white color option
It looks like the phone borrows a rear dot matrix display from Asus ROG laptops
We've been seeing a bit more of the ROG Phone 5, the Asus-branded gamer phone, in the leadup to its official announcement. Yesterday a chip supplier let slip that at least one model will be equipped with a staggering 18GB of memory. Today a Twitter leak appears to show the phone in rendered form, revealing a white variant and a clip-on cooler unit carried over from the last model, and what appears to be an LED dot matrix on the back. Assuming that the images posted by Ishan Agarwal are legit—and they certainly match the leak from last month—the RGB LEDs integrated into the rear of the phone mirror another Asus hardware design. The ROG Zephyrus G14 laptop includes a similar LED "aniMe Matrix" screen on its top lid as an eye-catching feature. If the rear of the ROG Phone 5 is similar, it would offer user-adjustable decorative display settings and animations, like an equalizer display. Its practical applications would be fairly limited, but the laptop uses it to show the date and charge status. The rendered photos only show the ROG eye logo.[EMBED_TWITTER]https://twitter.com/ishanagarwal24/status/1369322403390709768[/EMBED_TWITTER] The snazzy white version shows a similar design. It's not clear from the renders if the additional slanted text and arrow icons on the rear are part of the rear LCD display shown in the older leak, or if the dot matrix section is replacing it. for comparison, here's the previous video leak showing what's definitely an LCD screen, and which doesn't match the text and icons of the renders above:Of course since this is all unofficial, the video might be of a pre-production model with a design that's since been abandoned. It's also possible that there will be different variants of the phone: one with a conventional LCD on the rear, one with the dot matrix. Other details visible in the images are triple rear cameras and a bottom-mounted power port (the better to keep your hands clear for gaming), both of which are carryovers from the ROG Phone 3. There also appear to be a fold-out kickstand and buttons of some kind on the updated active cooler clip-on—maybe dedicated rear trigger buttons?The styling has been adjusted, keeping the angular approach with full bezels (no notches or hole punches) and a new distinctive "GLHF!" decorative cover on the bottom. Based on the little hole, it might be a SIM card tray that's decided it doesn't want anything to do with subtlety. Asus is expected to officially announce the ROG Phone 5 tomorrow. Pricing and availability aren't known, but "expensive" and "limited" seem like safe bets, respectively.
The Asus ROG Phone 5 will have a stupid amount of RAM
A press release from a chip supplier says it's coming with 18GB
Asus has scheduled an announcement for the ROG Phone 5 tomorrow, March 9th. But one of its corporate partners has spilled the beans a little early. SK Hynix, a South Korean chip supplier, issued a press release Sunday that said it's sending its first 18 gigabyte mobile LPDDR5 RAM modules to ASUS for the new ROG Phone.
ASUS schedules March announcement for ROG Phone 5
That would leave a very short tail on the ROG Phone 3
ASUS looks intent on pushing a fast follow-up to its $1,000 gamer-focused ROG Phone 3 — the poor thing only came out in October and it's got a successor lined up for March 9. Because the word "four" is a homonym for "death" in most Asian languages (where most of the major tech manufacturers are), we're talking about the ROG Phone 5.