This is a “gamer” phone, so of course there is the requisite hyper-aggressive design motif in the hardware and software. Every feature is cut into the phone with a sharp angular design, and there was no way this phone was leaving the ROG factory without a light-up RGB logo on the back and configurable lighting schemes. The back of the phone actually has cooling vents, which, combined with the vapor cooling system, allow the throttle-happy Snapdragon chip to run at peak performance for five times longer than normal. Despite the cooling holes, the ROG phone is still, somehow, “water-resistant,” according to Asus.
For even more cooling, Asus is including a clip-on fan. The “AeroActive Cooler” leeches power from the double USB port on the side and provides a pass-through USB port, another headphone jack, and another light-up RGB logo. The headphone jack and USB port here are in addition to the ones on the bottom, which are in a better orientation for use while landscape gaming.
Of course, this runs Android—Android 8.1, to be exact—so any decent games for your gaming phone will be few and far between. Asus is mostly demoing the phone with the online shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, one of the tiny handful of Android games that isn’t a casual gaming snoozefest.
The Accessories
The TwinView clamshell. Wouldn’t gamers rather have analog sticks and buttons on the bottom?
You can also buy an ecosystem of accessories for your gaming phone: a clip-on game controller, a crazy Nintendo DS-style dual-screen clamshell attachment, and a desktop dock that allows the phone to power a monitor, mouse, and keyboard.
The dual-screen handheld is the “TwinView Dock.” This clamshell device stores the phone in the top half, while the bottom half has another six-inch, 2160×1080 AMOLED display, another set of speakers, controller-style grips, real shoulder buttons, a 6,000mAh battery, and another cooling fan. There’s yet another headphone-jack pass through between the controller grips, USB-C on the back, and another RGB logo. No one seems exactly sure what the dual-screen setup is for. No third-party apps support a dual-screen view, but you can use Android’s built-in split-screen support to have one app in the top and one in the bottom. Asus hopes game developers will build special features for the extra screen. (Good luck with that, Asus.) It seems really odd to me that the bottom section doesn’t have physical buttons and analog sticks, like the Nvidia Shield Portable.