Asus ROG Phone 3 - Hands-on with Android's most powerful phone

The Asus Rog 3 is a powerful gaming phone that boasts a 6,000 milliamp hour battery, allowing it to last for up to 24 hours on a single charge. The phone's touch rate of 270 hertz provides a smooth and responsive experience, even in fast-paced games like PUBG Mobile. This feature alone makes the Rog 3 stand out from other gaming phones, as it eliminates the need to wait for controls to register.

The phone also features advanced screen controls, including a third-generation air trigger system that allows users to use the sides of the phone like shoulder buttons on a game controller. This feature is particularly useful in games where precise control is essential, and it adds an extra layer of immersion and engagement to the gaming experience. The Rog 3's battery life is also noteworthy, with the phone lasting over 24 hours on a single charge even with the screen refresh rate set to 144 hertz.

In addition to its gaming features, the Rog 3 is also a solid 5G phone that supports sub-65g bands from carriers. While it wasn't possible to test the phone's battery life on 5G due to location restrictions, the manufacturer has assured that the phone's battery will handle the demands of 5G without sacrificing performance.

The Asus Rog 3 makes significant software improvements over its predecessors, with Android 10 and the Asus Zen UI providing a seamless and intuitive experience. The phone also features a range of power-saving modes and options for optimizing battery life, including scheduling when the power mode activates and setting battery charge limits. This focus on battery care and longevity sets the Rog 3 apart from other gaming phones.

The camera system on the Rog 3 is one of its strongest features, with a quad-camera setup that produces high-quality photos and videos. The main camera delivers smooth HDR and colors, while the ultra-wide angle camera provides good IQ compared to last year's model. The macro camera is also a fun feature that adds an extra layer of versatility to the phone's photography capabilities. However, the selfie camera could use some improvement, with skin softening issues still present.

In terms of video recording, the Rog 3 can capture 8K footage in certain situations, although this comes at the cost of noticeable banding in skies or low-light shots. The 4K video from the phone is also prone to banding, but this issue may be addressed through software updates. While the camera system is not perfect, it's clear that Asus has made significant strides in improving the phone's photography capabilities.

The final price point for the Asus Rog 3 remains unknown at this time, although it's likely to be similar to last year's model. If priced similarly, the Rog 3 would be a strong contender in the gaming smartphone market, with its powerful performance, long battery life, and advanced camera system making it an attractive option for gamers and enthusiasts alike.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is the asus rog 3 it's the most powerful android phone we've ever tested and it foreshadows many of the features we'll see on android smartphones in 2021 i should say up front that this video isn't a full review but rather an in-depth hands-on asus lent us a pre-production rog 3 with pre-production software in fact the final software is due out on the same day this video comes out that said there's a lot to talk about and let's start with those specs a snapdragon 865 plus processor 16 gigabytes of ram a 6 000 milliamp hour battery a 6.59 inch amoled display with 144 hertz refresh rate a triple rear camera with a 64 megapixel main camera 8k video 5g mid band support it's got all the specs and all of them are impressive but perhaps the most impressive thing asus did was to make the new rog-3 exactly the same size and shape as last year's rog-2 meaning it can take full advantage of all the numerous accessories asus makes for the rog phones this also means that the rog3 is the same chunky behemoth when it comes to using it it weighs over half a pound which if you're a small phone lover just uh stay away it's gonna horrify you but that heft feels good especially when i'm playing games now there are some differences in the bodies of the rog3 and rog ii namely there's no headphone jack on the rog-3 unless you use the fan attachment also it has a bigger camera bump stylized the rog-3 looks sleek even a touch understated compared to the rog-2 the copper heatsink sits down under a transparent sliver of gorilla glass 3 on the back it's kind of like how lamborghini uses a glass cover over their engines but let's talk about what you really care about which is performance and that's where the rog3 leaves all other android phones in the dust the combination of the h65 plus processor 16 gigabytes of ram though there is a 12 gigabyte version too and ufs 3.1 storage makes this an absolute performance monster when i put the phone into x mode it's not only faster than every android phone we've tested this year i can honestly use it for long periods of time for gaming without that performance dipping and when i'm not gaming apps open up fast animations are buttery smooth and you add all this together with that 144 hertz refresh rate screen everything about this phone makes the rest of my world seem slow the rog 3 is peppy and fast and it's absolutely addictive having this kind of performance in my fingertips let's go back to that 144hz refresh rate first it's near impossible to show how alive this screen looks on video but it is compelling the rog3 isn't the first phone to have a 144hz screen but we'll likely see this refresh rate come to other android flagship phones next year it's the same way we see 90hz and 120hz displays on phones coming out this year which the rog and ii had first but let's talk about the screen's quality the 6.5 inch amoled is good but it still has an hd resolution which sometimes well i wish text would appear more crisp the screen has a touch rate of 270 hertz which i'll be honest that is impossible to show on video even more so than the 144hz refresh rate but in use especially in games screen controls felt peppy i never felt like i was tapping waiting for a gun to fire or a jump to happen and if the on-screen controls aren't enough there is the third generation of air triggers which let you use the sides of the phone like the shoulder buttons on a game controller you can assign on-screen controls to either of the air triggers which in a game like pubg mobile makes gameplay much more compelling being able to use my phone like an actual game controller and this is where that six thousand milliamp hour battery comes to play in a year where we see a lot of phones with a five thousand milliamp hour battery the extra milliamp hours allow the rog-3 to have all this performance without sacrificing battery life in fact i ran a looped video test at 50 brightness in airplane mode and the rog 3 lasted 24 hours in three minutes and that was with the screen refresh rate set to 144 hertz while we still have more tester runs that result is impressive now obviously when gaming is not going to last 24 hours straight but i had no problem making it through a two and a half hour gaming marathon playing pubg mobile asphalt 9 alto's odyssey yeah asus also gives you a variety of ways to optimize your battery including various power and savings modes letting you schedule when the power mode comes on and allowing you to set battery charge limits in fact this asus rog 3 has the most extensive options for battery care and longevity that i've seen on any phone while gaming is no doubt the rog's main focus this is also a 5g phone and will work on us carriers that offer sub 65g now i wasn't able to test the rog3 on 5g because of where i live but i'm excited to see how the battery handles to those demands before i talk about the cameras i want to say that the rog 3 makes solid tweaks and improvements to pretty much everything software wise it runs android 10 with the asus zen ui though there is the gamers inspired rog ui dark mode too that's the one i picked the aero active cooler aka the detachable fan now has a kickstand and just like other rog phones there is a second usbc port accessory port on the left side for horizontal gameplay the rg3 comes with a 30 watt charger and you get three months of google stadia pro for free now not everything's rosy with the rg3 in fact it doesn't have ip rating for dust or water resistance and it lacks wireless charging nah it'd be nice to have those now let's talk about the cameras which are decent in fact i would say this is the best camera array on any asus rog phone to date now it's not going to be named best camera of 2020 or even close photos from the main camera look good especially with hdr skin is smoothed a bit more than i'd prefer and colors skew a tad magenta there's also a night mode which actually produces some stellar shots the ultra wide angle camera is solid and matches the main camera more so than last year's rog ii meaning the visual difference in iq is not as noticeable between the main and ultrawide cameras and then there's the macro camera which is fun but i don't know it feels a bit more like a gimmick the selfie camera on the front is decent again there's a lot of skin softening happening but portrait mode selfies actually look pretty decent impressively the rog3 could shoot 8k video in some situations it looks pretty good but there's a lot of banding in skies or shooting in low light situations also do you really need 8k on your phone the 4k video from the phone looks good but still suffers from banding now this could be improved through software updates and that's again why this is not a full review i in fact i i look forward to checking this out and see if that is a fix they issue in the future finally let's talk about price at the time i'm recording this video asus hasn't announced a price yet if it's the same as last year's 900 asus rog 2 i'd have no hesitation recommending it heck with the 5g support i could see this being a a thousand dollar phone easily now the asus rog 3 will likely be available in the us this fall so that's all i got for more on the asus rog3 check out my article on cnet.com but i want to hear from you what do you think of the phone would you buy it does it have all the specs you were hoping for throw your thoughts in the commentsthis is the asus rog 3 it's the most powerful android phone we've ever tested and it foreshadows many of the features we'll see on android smartphones in 2021 i should say up front that this video isn't a full review but rather an in-depth hands-on asus lent us a pre-production rog 3 with pre-production software in fact the final software is due out on the same day this video comes out that said there's a lot to talk about and let's start with those specs a snapdragon 865 plus processor 16 gigabytes of ram a 6 000 milliamp hour battery a 6.59 inch amoled display with 144 hertz refresh rate a triple rear camera with a 64 megapixel main camera 8k video 5g mid band support it's got all the specs and all of them are impressive but perhaps the most impressive thing asus did was to make the new rog-3 exactly the same size and shape as last year's rog-2 meaning it can take full advantage of all the numerous accessories asus makes for the rog phones this also means that the rog3 is the same chunky behemoth when it comes to using it it weighs over half a pound which if you're a small phone lover just uh stay away it's gonna horrify you but that heft feels good especially when i'm playing games now there are some differences in the bodies of the rog3 and rog ii namely there's no headphone jack on the rog-3 unless you use the fan attachment also it has a bigger camera bump stylized the rog-3 looks sleek even a touch understated compared to the rog-2 the copper heatsink sits down under a transparent sliver of gorilla glass 3 on the back it's kind of like how lamborghini uses a glass cover over their engines but let's talk about what you really care about which is performance and that's where the rog3 leaves all other android phones in the dust the combination of the h65 plus processor 16 gigabytes of ram though there is a 12 gigabyte version too and ufs 3.1 storage makes this an absolute performance monster when i put the phone into x mode it's not only faster than every android phone we've tested this year i can honestly use it for long periods of time for gaming without that performance dipping and when i'm not gaming apps open up fast animations are buttery smooth and you add all this together with that 144 hertz refresh rate screen everything about this phone makes the rest of my world seem slow the rog 3 is peppy and fast and it's absolutely addictive having this kind of performance in my fingertips let's go back to that 144hz refresh rate first it's near impossible to show how alive this screen looks on video but it is compelling the rog3 isn't the first phone to have a 144hz screen but we'll likely see this refresh rate come to other android flagship phones next year it's the same way we see 90hz and 120hz displays on phones coming out this year which the rog and ii had first but let's talk about the screen's quality the 6.5 inch amoled is good but it still has an hd resolution which sometimes well i wish text would appear more crisp the screen has a touch rate of 270 hertz which i'll be honest that is impossible to show on video even more so than the 144hz refresh rate but in use especially in games screen controls felt peppy i never felt like i was tapping waiting for a gun to fire or a jump to happen and if the on-screen controls aren't enough there is the third generation of air triggers which let you use the sides of the phone like the shoulder buttons on a game controller you can assign on-screen controls to either of the air triggers which in a game like pubg mobile makes gameplay much more compelling being able to use my phone like an actual game controller and this is where that six thousand milliamp hour battery comes to play in a year where we see a lot of phones with a five thousand milliamp hour battery the extra milliamp hours allow the rog-3 to have all this performance without sacrificing battery life in fact i ran a looped video test at 50 brightness in airplane mode and the rog 3 lasted 24 hours in three minutes and that was with the screen refresh rate set to 144 hertz while we still have more tester runs that result is impressive now obviously when gaming is not going to last 24 hours straight but i had no problem making it through a two and a half hour gaming marathon playing pubg mobile asphalt 9 alto's odyssey yeah asus also gives you a variety of ways to optimize your battery including various power and savings modes letting you schedule when the power mode comes on and allowing you to set battery charge limits in fact this asus rog 3 has the most extensive options for battery care and longevity that i've seen on any phone while gaming is no doubt the rog's main focus this is also a 5g phone and will work on us carriers that offer sub 65g now i wasn't able to test the rog3 on 5g because of where i live but i'm excited to see how the battery handles to those demands before i talk about the cameras i want to say that the rog 3 makes solid tweaks and improvements to pretty much everything software wise it runs android 10 with the asus zen ui though there is the gamers inspired rog ui dark mode too that's the one i picked the aero active cooler aka the detachable fan now has a kickstand and just like other rog phones there is a second usbc port accessory port on the left side for horizontal gameplay the rg3 comes with a 30 watt charger and you get three months of google stadia pro for free now not everything's rosy with the rg3 in fact it doesn't have ip rating for dust or water resistance and it lacks wireless charging nah it'd be nice to have those now let's talk about the cameras which are decent in fact i would say this is the best camera array on any asus rog phone to date now it's not going to be named best camera of 2020 or even close photos from the main camera look good especially with hdr skin is smoothed a bit more than i'd prefer and colors skew a tad magenta there's also a night mode which actually produces some stellar shots the ultra wide angle camera is solid and matches the main camera more so than last year's rog ii meaning the visual difference in iq is not as noticeable between the main and ultrawide cameras and then there's the macro camera which is fun but i don't know it feels a bit more like a gimmick the selfie camera on the front is decent again there's a lot of skin softening happening but portrait mode selfies actually look pretty decent impressively the rog3 could shoot 8k video in some situations it looks pretty good but there's a lot of banding in skies or shooting in low light situations also do you really need 8k on your phone the 4k video from the phone looks good but still suffers from banding now this could be improved through software updates and that's again why this is not a full review i in fact i i look forward to checking this out and see if that is a fix they issue in the future finally let's talk about price at the time i'm recording this video asus hasn't announced a price yet if it's the same as last year's 900 asus rog 2 i'd have no hesitation recommending it heck with the 5g support i could see this being a a thousand dollar phone easily now the asus rog 3 will likely be available in the us this fall so that's all i got for more on the asus rog3 check out my article on cnet.com but i want to hear from you what do you think of the phone would you buy it does it have all the specs you were hoping for throw your thoughts in the comments\n"