ASUS ROG Phone II: A Snapdragon 855 Plus powered beast that includes everything but the kitchen sink

ASUS has been teasing the ROG Phone II for the last few weeks, with leaked images along with Geekbench and TENAA listings adding to the hype surrounding the device. Now, a day earlier than anticipated, ASUS has lifted the lid on its next gaming smartphone and boy is it making some bold claims about its capabilities.

As we stated yesterday, the ROG Phone II will come with a 6.59-inch AMOLED display, which will run natively at 2,340 x 1,080 in a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. ASUS claims that the 120 Hz panel covers 108% of the DCI-P3 colour space, with a 240 Hz touch sampling rate, a 10,000:1 contrast ratio and a 49 ms touch latency. The latter puts it ahead of even the iPhone XS Max, which is currently the standard-bearer for low touch latency. You will be able to enjoy videos in 10-bit HDR too where supported. It is worth keeping in mind that the display runs at 60 Hz by default, but this can be adjusted globally or on a per-app basis to 120 Hz. The display also incorporates an optical in-screen fingerprint scanner.

Underpinning the display is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus SoC, which can maintain 2.96 GHz on its prime core, 12 GB of RAM and 512 GB of UFS 3.0 storage. ASUS claims that these components give the ROG Phone II a significant performance boost over the OnePlus 7 Pro in synthetic benchmarks like 3DMark while eliminating throttling. The latter is possible thanks to a 3D vapour chamber cooling system, which exhausts heat through a vent on the rear of the device. Incidentally, the original ROG Phone had a vent, but this was merely an affectation.

ASUS has equipped the ROG Phone II with an improved set of Air Triggers too, the vibration latency of which has been reduced from 63 ms to just 20 ms. The device also retains a 3.5 mm headphone jack, along with dual front-facing speakers, while ASUS claims it has a vibration motor that is three times as powerful as the one in the OnePlus 7 Pro. The cameras have received an upgrade too, the star of which being a 48 MP sensor that we suspect is the Sony IMX586.

Powering all this is a crazy 6,000 mAh battery, a 50% larger capacity cell than the one in the original ROG Phone, that supports 30 W charging and Qualcomm Quick Charge 4.0. The ROG Phone II will ship with Android 9.0 Pie, atop of which ASUS adds its ROG UI. GSMArena reports that the device can switch between the gaming focussed ROG UI and the near vanilla version that ASUS employed in the ZenFone 6.

ASUS will launch the ROG Phone II worldwide in early September alongside a new set of accessories. By contrast, the Chinese model will go on sale tomorrow, although ASUS is keeping quiet on pricing until tomorrow's joint Tencent-ASUS press event.