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
Conclusions
In the past, we’ve had two very distinct markets at play: handheld consoles with a dedicated ecosystem for gaming, and smartphones for making calls and doing everything online. Trying to bridge the gap between these two markets typically involves starting with one specific device and working towards the middle: the ASUS ROG Phone II starts with the concept of a phone and works towards a dedicated gaming console.
Is this direction the correct way to go? Handheld consoles work great because the hardware is cheap, the gaming titles are dedicated and optimized, and communities build around them. Smartphones work great because of the wealth of apps built for them integrate a lot of device features and enable both a strong workflow and social media integration. Smartphones don’t work great because the game model is substantially different, and handheld consoles don’t do workflow because the app ecosystem isn’t geared that way. It’s a catch-22 either way.
What ASUS wants to do with the ROG Phone II is build one of the best gaming experiences on Android. If we leave handheld consoles to the side for the moment, and imagine what we want out of smartphone gaming on Android, and the ASUS hits a lot of boxes: a high performance SoC with an tuned OS and high performance mode, strong front facing speakers, a high resolution high refresh-rate display, a long life battery, and accessories to help enable a better user experience. Ultimately, ASUS pitches the ROG Phone II as a gaming platform first, that just happens to take phone calls.
But the crux of it all, for me, is that it all comes down to whether gaming on Android is even a thing worth considering. If that is a thing, then ASUS has produced a great solution for it.
Let me put this into two boxes:
At $899, ASUS has created an impressive flagship smartphone that has a long list of bonus features. Dual front facing speakers, 120 Hz display, 6000 mAh battery, high performance, Wi-Gig, the list goes on: all a user has to put up with is a slightly heavier-than-normal device, that just happens to be a phone as well.
At $899, ASUS has created an expensive handheld console. There’s nothing this device can run that a standard flagship smartphone can’t, and at the end of the day our traditional view of a gaming console revolves around unique experiences. What gaming ASUS does enable is some of the best on the Android market, but it’s expensive when compared to something like the Switch.
Would I recommend the ROG Phone II? It’s a lot of hardware as a smartphone. But even though gaming is the focus of the device, I don’t know anyone who buys a smartphone specifically with gaming in mind. For that, handheld consoles do the job.
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mrochester - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
*buy.PeachNCream - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
Anything Google touches basically turns into a platform for data collection that exploits the user and yest the phone is ugly. What sorts of alternatives did you have in mind?AdhesiveTeflon - Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - link
You want us to get a Blackberry instead?Azurael - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
A phone with a large battery, no notch and a screen which isn't wrapped around the edges of the phone. Perfect but for the fact it looks like it was designed for a 12 year old (with rich parents?) and the camera suckss.yu - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
1. 3rd party cases look serious enough. Also consider removing the back panel and the whole paint job inside like how some people made Samsungs transparent.2. Port Gcam.
abufrejoval - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
These devices are simply the new [very] personal computers. The fact, that they evolved from phones is about as meaningful as to say that humans are a special type of single-cell organism, that stopped separating completely after cell division.And when you look at the typical daily usage pattern of these VPCs, you'll find that many, especially younger users, will go days without using the phone functionality at all: That's Mom & Pop stuff, ancient history and typically only used to remind them of chores left undone and thus silenced!
The phone moniker only serves to justify why these devices you're supposedly buying to own, are kept tethered to vendors and telcos, who have no business whatsoever on your very personal computers, after they habe become your property and digital brain extension or Internet of Bodies limb.
Please help ending this abuse if only by calling them by what they are instead of whence they originated eons ago.
PeachNCream - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
It's not just a kid thing. I could easily get by without any sort of more conventional PC by relying exclusively on my phone. In a roundabout way, I've already done that by neglecting to boot up a PC for several days and more often than not, I'm only turning them on to fetch updates or do something that benefits from a keyboard (less often now since I have a bluetooth keyboard paired up with my phone). The reverse situation where I would have to resort to only a PC and omit the phone would be more troublesome because of a lack of effective communications mechanisms and a lack of portability.abufrejoval - Wednesday, October 2, 2019 - link
Absolutely, and with this dock, I am seriosly considering to buy this as a mobile workstation: I do have some usable notebooks, quite a bit slower than this device (e.g. ChuWi 12.3).Of course, there is yet some other elements missing: The clamshell dock, which allows me to use this device as a notebook and the ability to run Linux desktop apps with the proper GPU acceleration: The current hacks running a Linux userland in a chroot() and an X-Server on the Android end eat too much 'snappyness' to.
I'd keep a dock in every major office location I work in, with either a nice 4k screen or dual monitor setup, keyboard and mouse and then use the clamshell on planes and trains if the ride is long enough to make it worthwhile and otherwise just use it handheld or with WiDi for presentations. A serious conference room could have a WGig dock.
It's not a hardware issue any longer, just "opposing software empires".
29a - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
Is there anyway to get uBlock to block these advertisement articles?zeeBomb - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
Is this the first real superphone???