The ASUS ROG Phone II Review: Mobile Gaming First, Phone Second
by Dr. Ian Cutress on September 30, 2019 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Asus
- Qualcomm
- Smartphones
- ROG
- RGB
- Snapdragon 855 Plus
- ROG Phone II
Battery Life
With a 6000 mAh battery, the ROG Phone II already promised out of the gate to have some substantial staying power. The big battery is meant to compensate for having additional features like the 120 Hz display and X Mode which might consume more battery during gaming. Nonetheless, in our standard Wi-Fi battery test, it smashes new records.
Setting the display to 200 nits, our web battery test simulates accessing webpages with a variety of features with scrolling – standard operation for any smartphone.
In the default 60Hz mode that the phone ships in, it results in over 16 hours of runtime, that caters for any ‘all-day’ battery claim, and is certainly above any other smartphone on the market. Moving to a perminent 120 Hz mode loses about 20% of the battery life.
Similarly, the PCMark battery test also dropped 20%, however the average score in the PCMark battery test on 120 Hz mode did increase by 17% (10746 vs 9152) , indicating the tradeoff that a higher refresh screen might bring.
Not being the standard smartphone reviewer, unfortunately I do not have access to all the tools that Andrei does for his testing. As a result, our display testing is fairly basic. At 100% APL, the peak brightness was measured at ~450 nits, which is below ASUS’ claim of 600 nits. It is likely that ASUS’ number is peak brightness (1% APL), not full screen. We also measured the white point at ~8450K.
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Vince789 - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
Also it would have been interesting to see the GPU power consumption, and how it compares to the regular 855BramEPC - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
Not really specific for this phone but would it be possible in general to indicate what version of USB (2.0, 3.* gen * (x *), ... PD ? ) the phone supports ? USB-C is not very helpful.Sharma_Ji - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
Bottom type C is 2.0Side is 3.1
Now someone might get headache when they see me transferring files to PC and my phone connected to it through the side.😅
Notmyusualid - Saturday, October 5, 2019 - link
@ Sharma - THIS is true! Thanks for the tip buddy!Here is one for you - International ROM working on Chinese 'Tencent' 8G/128G version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVIWWMtqHp4
I won't try it until back home, so I don't leave myself high & dry on the road with a bricked phone.
Notmyusualid - Saturday, October 5, 2019 - link
@ me - sorry, here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPrQidE5H0o
brucethemoose - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
This was touched on, but if you can take the modest battery hit, a 120hz display (and low latency touch input) is an amazing experience *outside* of games. Pretty much any app that involves scrolling feels so much more responsive.s.yu - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
I also found that by setting animations to x0.5 in developer settings everything's more snappy. Turning it off entirely may save another fraction of a second but it may seem subjectively laggy.airdrifting - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
LOL 6000mAh battery, take my money please.But seriously, when can we have a flagship with 5000mAh battery? Who is going to be the first one to do it? Oneplus? Huawei? Xiaomi? I know it's not going to be Samsung or Apple.
Sharma_Ji - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
Only asus did this with 6Z , @ 5000mah battery.Lochtror - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
helloi play 2 competitive online mobile games regularly. also while in public transport.
that made me realize that a feature a game oriented, or well, any high end phone, should offer is redundant internet connection with fast switching to which connection is better.
so... dual sim with two data lines active.
but also acess to 2 wifi networks at the same time with the same function. making sure the connection stays ups as well as possible.
does any device have something like that already?
or does the dualsim mobile data in other devices work better than in my phones?