The ASUS ROG Phone III Review: A 144Hz 6000mAh Beast With Caveats
by Andrei Frumusanu on August 28, 2020 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Snapdragon 865
- ROG Phone III
Conclusion & End Remarks
The ROG Phone III is a device that attempts to carve itself out a niche place in the mobile device market. We’ve put the device through quite a lot of testing, and the question which remains is whether it’s been able to successfully rationalise its existence as a gaming device.
From a design standpoint, I think the ROG Phone III is a success, simply from a practicality point of view. ASUS doesn’t attempt to create a super-modern or sleek design, but rather what they did is to create an extremely solid phone that mostly doesn’t have any gimmicks in order to set itself as a good gaming device.
Key aspects here are simply its large size and display, the avoidance of any front notches or hole-punch cameras, and the symmetrical outstandingly well performing front-facing stereo speaker setup.
Sure, it’s a big and heavy phone, but unlike some other phones in the market, I the ROG Phone III feels more like it’s meant to be big and heavy.
The screen is a key feature of the phone, and it’s very good. Although in 2020 it doesn’t stand out quite as much as it did in 2019, the 144Hz refresh rate is still very good and the 270Hz touch response certainly helps with the fluidity of the device. ASUS also has accurate display colours, although the higher gamma target means you’ll have darker tones.
Due to its massive 6000mAh battery, the ROG3 again takes the top spot in our battery charts, beating any other flagship class device on the market, you’d actually have to give up performance to be able to get a phone with bigger batteries or longer battery life.
On the camera side of things, the situation isn’t as great. The ROG Phone III is pretty much lacklustre here, as the daylight processing just isn’t very good, with the phone having issues with exposure and HDR. In low-light, the lack of OIS is the phone’s Achilles’ heel and also isn’t able to compete much against other devices on the market. It’s by far the device’s biggest weak-point, much alike last year’s ROG Phone II.
Performance is the big question mark for the ROG Phone III, and here things are both positive and negative. It’s an extremely snappy and fluid device thanks to the 144Hz, but it does lose out on the software side of things in terms of optimisations. Running the phone in X-mode all the time gives you better performance but comes at a cost of battery life, ASUS here could have just used a smarter way to tune things rather than employing a relatively dumb minimum frequency peg.
Gaming performance is supposed to be the phone’s key selling point, and ASUS makes available a lot of features to achieve a better experience. The phone’s air trigger buttons are clear hardware advantages that cannot be copied by any other “regular” smartphone, so that’s one aspect of mobile gaming where the ROG3 takes the lead.
However, the Snapdragon 865+ seems to be a double-edged sword. While yes, it does improve peak performance by 10% over the regular Snapdragon 865 devices out there, it looks like this comes at a 25% power penalty. In sustained performance tests, the ROG Phone III without the AeroCooler add-on performs worse than competing devices from LG, OnePlus or Xiaomi. With the accessory connected, it’s only able to marginally edge out these devices, which makes you wonder if it’s all even worth it.
One positive of ASUS’s ROG Phone III SKU offering is that the base “Strix” model features just the regular Snapdragon 865, which if it performs similarly to other devices in the market, shouldn’t have the same compromises between performance and heat. ASUS also gives you the option to tune-down the phone for better thermals, but then again, what’s the point in getting it?
I don’t see the 999€ or 1099€ variants of the ROG Phone III being worth it, however the 799€ base model should make for a quite balanced phone which shines in terms of battery life, and gives you a great high-refresh rate experience. If you can live with the weak cameras, then it should represent a good phone for you.
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ArcadeEngineer - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
I don't get this idea that bluetooth headphones are somehow more convenient than wired ones. Having another charger to juggle outlets on is the opposite of convenient.Tchamber - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
I use my headphones all day work. For fun, I can listen to music, whatever. But I'm standing, walking, bending over and leaning in my CnC mill all day long, and having a cord was a hassle for me. That's pretty much the only place I listen to my phone. For me, it's no hassle having one more plug, especially when my LG Tones last two days at work.ads295 - Saturday, August 29, 2020 - link
High five from someone who owns two Swiss-types :-)flyingpants265 - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link
Of course it's not a f****** hassle.The reason for deleting headphone jack is to sell wireless headphones, it is a multi-billion dollar market on its own. This is a tech website, everyone should know this by now.
Comments about removing the 3.5 jack, have been bought and paid for. Haha. What I mean is, Corporations have successfully used money for advertising and other various influences to ultimately engineer legions of smooth-brained human beings to tell me that plugging in my headphones is bad. Yeah, ok. I'll do anything you want. Why don't you just sodomize me too while you're at it?
Great_Scott - Monday, August 31, 2020 - link
The good news here is that there's a cottage industry of USB-C sound cards with 3.5 jack support for phones like this. And the huge battery means that you wouldn't need to charge it at the same time...s.yu - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
You don't. Because there are two C ports. As long as there exists flagships with headphone jacks or two C ports, I will not buy one with one C port no jack.Quantumz0d - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
Tell me does any of those BT sets have a good driver to boot, and then tell me whether any of them support AptX technology to be able to play my FLAC files / 24 Bit files or Can they work without an app always to function.Dude I have a V30 with me, the ESS DAC in that is not possible to be beaten by any company, I even have a Modi stack with me for monitors, and I can plug in my IEMs, Monitors, HD600s and I don't have to fiddle with some stupid charging box and worry about them, my IEMs are Triple Drivers with Hybrid technology. And you say you want Audio fidelity ? nice joke esp with Power Beats ? Muddy Bass technology is what they have.
I'm sorry there's none of the BT technology which makes any aspect from Sound quality, Fidelity, Convenience & Price to Performance, there are NO BT sets in mainstream that we can buy which have stunning audio performance you need to shell out for MMCX, like Shures.
Let me tell you one more thing, my phone has BT as well, and I can buy any BT set I want and a 3.5mm enabled any of the ChiFi or Japanese or European IEMs/Cans. Also instead of that overpriced Powerbeats Apple set go and buy an RHA T20 wireless, it has AptX, great battery, superior sound, superior build quality and have 3.5mm wire also.
vol.2 - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
you're just walking into a dumb argument here. people are allowed to like their specific wired headphones and they should be able to use them if they want to. i have both; i use the bluetooth for calls and watching youtube, i use one of my many pairs of wired headphones for music.Tchamber - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
Sure, I didn't think I was arguing though. I get it, wired headphones sound better.Lolimaster - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link
Thing is, the two technologies can coexist till the end of time. Point is, there's no excuse to remove the jack from a phone or worse, from a tablet (S7 line). Then ironically, gigantic camera bumps are protruding from phones in futile attempt to keep the rest of the phone "slim". 0.9 or 1cm thicc phones are perfectly fine, that's around my S9 + cover included and that phone feels way more secure in the hand than the stock 0.85cm.