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
Battery Life - The Best
The previous generation ROG Phones have impressed us a lot when it comes to their battery life, and that’s easily attributed to the massive 6000mAh battery that’s included in the 240g heavy phone.
The ROG Phone III this year doesn’t increase battery capacity, but does feature a more efficient SoC that should showcase even better results. The minor bump to 144Hz shouldn’t come with a notable power consumption increase.
As expected, the ROG Phone III is topping our battery life charts. At 60Hz refresh rate, the new phone slightly edges out the older ROG Phone II with an astounding 16.51h runtime.
Turning on the 144Hz refresh rate comes with a large 22% hit in battery life, but in absolute terms it still maintains an excellent 12.9h runtime, making this the longest-lasting phone amongst the 120Hz+ crowd.
In PCMark, the improved power efficiency of the new SoC is further exposed, with the newer generation having a bigger leap of the Snapdragon 855 ROG Phone II.
The absolute battery life runtimes here are outstanding.
Overall, there’s very little to say about the ROG Phone III’s battery life other than it being class-leading. There’s no other flagship device out there with such great battery life, as vendors only employ such huge battery capacities in lower-end devices. You have to pay the price in terms of device weight, but you’re also getting a lot in return.
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s.yu - Wednesday, September 2, 2020 - link
I have more faith in the sound quality of a C port powered active adapter than a wireless adapter powered by a tiny battery.flyingpants265 - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link
I love sdcards, but I'm willing to sacrifice for waterproofing. Also you can expend $ to get like 1tb storage. You can't pay more to get front speakers.. LAME.BS3 is cool, but also missing other stuff. And Xiaomi's crapware is bad
Lolimaster - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link
Any flagship phone had "waterproof" +sd/sim slot. In fact, if a phone has a sim slot, there's no excuse for no sd support.benedict - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
So the specs are almost the same as Xiaomi Mi 10, but the price is much higher. Asus is not a luxury brand when it comes to phones, so there's no excuse for the huge price premium.hemedans - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
they always sell cheaper version with 8gb/128gb configuration, around $500.GC2:CS - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
Does that mean S865+ is basically S865 with higher voltages allowed ?And a fan is needed to bring it back to regular temperatures.
Why ask a premium for it then ?
Also it is strange that the iP SE competes on GPU without people complaining that it burns their hands down.
Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
So far on the 3 S865+ phones that I have, they all have increased power for the increased peak perf, with worse sustained performance. So in that regard it does look disappointing.Luminar - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
How is this disappointing? I thought you anticipated this situation of more peak performance and more peak power.You said this would be the case in your first article about the 865+. You said the 865+ would hit >3.0GHz but the 865+ would be able to consume the same or less power, due to being able to do more work in less time thanks to higher frequencies.
Luminar - Friday, August 28, 2020 - link
Correction: *the same or less energy.Lolimaster - Sunday, August 30, 2020 - link
Increasing voltages, throwing aside efficiency. Phones can't simply comply with energy requirements using passive cooling, even if it's "liquid"