Best gaming phone 2020

Best gaming phone 2020

ASUS ROG PHONE 3

 Asus is a pretty popular name in

gaming hardware

and that extends to phones too this is

the rog

phone 3 their newest flagship is this

the gaming phone to rule them all

let's find out in our full review

[Music]

the rog phone 3 is a flagship phone made

of premium glass and metal

as expected you get the gamer style

aesthetic here including a glowing led

logo this year the bold design elements

are a bit more toned down

and the finish is glossy not matte one

special touch is the triangle accent on

the back

rather than some sort of decal it's

actually a window through which you can

see the phone's huge copper heatsink

the looks and form factor of the rog-3

are quite similar to last year's model

just a bit thicker and heftier this time

around but just like on the rog phone 2

there's no ip rating

this fancy hardware is vulnerable to

dust and water

asus is known for its extensive

selection of gaming accessories for its

rog phones

most of which you'd need to buy

separately but you do get an aeroactive

cooler 3 in the box

it's a fan that attaches to help cool

down the phone and your hands too

plus it doubles as a kickstand you can

reuse some of the accessories from last

year

like the kunai gamepad too the case and

paddles don't fit on the rog3

so you have to use it as more of a

standalone bluetooth controller

however if you really want to make the

phone look like a nintendo switch

asus has just announced their new kunai

gamepad 3.

last year's twin view dock 2 is fully

compatible here as well

and it gives you a giant nintendo ds

sort of vibe

although in-game support for a dual

screen is pretty scarce at the moment

you can find a couple of games that can

utilize the second screen

the just announced twin view dock 3 also

works much the same way

but the second screen has a higher

refresh rate

another peripheral you can use with the

rog 3 is the mobile desktop dock

it allows you to connect the phone to a

tv or monitor and play your games on the

big screen

you can use this with a controller or

even plug in a mouse and keyboard which

for some games can feel almost like

cheating

the rog 3's display has seen some

upgrades over last year despite keeping

the same size

it's a 6.59 inch oled panel with a 1080p

resolution

but what makes it stand out is its super

fast 144 hertz max refresh rate

and 270 hertz touch sampling rate this

means that moving objects should appear

much smoother to the eye

you have options for 60 90 120 or 144

hertz which are enforced across the

whole system where possible

and there's also an auto mode that will

adjust the refresh rate based on the

particular app

the low 25 millisecond touch latency

means that the phone is quick and

responsive

perfect for gaming or even just swiping

around the display performed admirably

in our tests too

you get the excellent contrast you'd

expect from an oled and max brightness

is great

up to around 460 nits with the slider

and 720 nits in auto mode in bright

conditions

new support for hdr 10 plus across the

major streaming platforms

and there are several color presets to

choose from some of which are quite

color accurate

like most phones you see these days with

oled screens the rog 3 employs an under

display fingerprint scanner for waking

up and unlocking the phone

it's quite fast and responsive there's

an always-on display

as well as a notification led up at the

top plus you can program the glowing

logo on the back of the phone to shine

for notifications

so when it's time to check your phone

you'll know

the rog phone 3 has a dedicated

front-facing stereo speaker setup

it's powerful each speaker has a 7

magnet design

and an independent amplifier plus asus

has partnered with the swedish audio

company dirac

for the phone's cutting edge audio

software which is specifically tailored

towards gaming

certain sounds and frequencies like

footsteps are amplified

plus there's advanced crosstalk

cancellation to have better separation

of the channels

for cleaner directionality and one of

the coolest features is the bass boost

which uses psychoacoustics to trick the

air into recognizing louder and deeper

bass tones

up to two octaves deeper than what the

speakers of this size are otherwise

capable of

overall the max loudness of the rog-3

speakers is a little less than what we

measured on the rog-2

but it's not by much and the audio

quality here is awesome

really on a different level compared to

most smartphones

[Music]

there is no 3.5 millimeter jack on the

rog phone 3

but there is a dongle included to plug

in traditional headphones

and there's actually an audio jack on

the aeroactive cooler fan

so if you have that attached you're all

set

the rog phone 3 has plenty of storage on

board and is of the super fast ufs 3.1

variety

you can choose from 128 256 or 512

gigabyte options

this isn't expandable via microsd though

there is support for plugging in an

external hard drive

if you wanted to do that the rog 3's

user interface

is based on android 10 and as you'd

expect from a device marketed for gamers

it brings bold aesthetics with geometric

shapes and contrasty colors

and a ton of options related to gaming

one feature that's back from last year

is the high performance mode called x

mode when you toggle it the ui

transforms and the led on the back

lights up

x mode has different tiers and the

highest performance level is only

available if you have the fan plugged in

if the gamer style ui isn't quite your

taste there is also an option for a

squeaky clean

more traditional looking interface and

themes there's something called

powermaster

which is a centralized place for

managing app power consumption

and charging options to increase battery

longevity

and there are in-depth controls dealing

with both screen recording and screen

capture

great for anyone serious about recording

their gameplay

speaking of gaming one handy set of

features on the rog3 lies with the game

genie

this is an in-game overlay that's easily

accessible by swiping on the edge of the

screen

it provides quick access to a bunch of

gaming related options

like do not disturb and brightness or

live streaming

it can also enable a floating toolbar

that displays performance stats

fps and temperature plus you have key

mapping options for the air triggers

the two touch sensitive areas on the

corners of the phone that are great for

games like shooters

in addition to that there are motion

control options key mapping for

controllers

and even macros you can set up for input

combinations

if you thought that was all you're way

off there's a whole gaming portal called

the armory crate

which on the surface is a convenient and

cool looking hub for accessing all of

your games

but it's even more than that one cool

feature it allows for is creating a

custom performance profile for each

individual game or app

this includes cpu gpu screen refresh

rate and temperature control

you can import and export these profiles

and share them online too

within these profiles if you want to go

even further you can enter advanced

hardcore tuning

this lets you tinker with specific

values for the phone's internals

we've never seen this level of hardware

control before without rooting the phone

there are also plenty of general system

wide settings as well as controls for

the cooling fan

lights and accessories plus you have

access to the game genie from here

and all that entails finally finding

games that make the best use of the

rog-3's various features can be tricky

but in the armory crate there is a menu

that lists games organized by supported

features

complete with links to the play store

take these with a grain of salt though

particularly with high refresh rate

support

that's up to the individual developers

to make possible

now let's move on to the phone's actual

performance the rog

phone 3 is powered by the newly

announced snapdragon 865 plus chipset

this is the first time we've seen this

ship and it's the fastest you can get on

android

it provides support for 5g network

speeds and compared to the regular 865

offers a 10 bump in clock speed of its

prime cpu core

as well as an increased gpu clock speed

as far as benchmarks go the rog phone 3

does an excellent job

as you would expect it sits at the top

of the charts as far as cpu performance

goes

and as far as graphics tests go it beats

the rest of the android competition

only falling short of apple's hardware

all in all

it's not a night and day improvement

over the regular snapdragon 865

but it is quite noticeable one

interesting observation we had was that

the x performance mode

didn't seem to boost the maximum

performance scores or fps rates very

much

instead asus seems to be aiming more

towards high sustained performance over

time

which is useful when you're actually

sitting down and playing games

the phone is already great at combating

thermal throttling thanks to its

heatsink and fan attachment

but the x mode tweaks performance

parameters and thermal tolerances

to help make sure that an hour or two

into gaming you don't run into some heat

related slowdown

at 6 000 milliamp hours the rog phone

3's battery is among the largest ones

you can get on a flagship today

with it the rog 3 scored an impressive

endurance rating of 120 hours in our

battery life tests

with its screen at the highest refresh

rate

and bumping the refresh rate down to a

standard 60 hertz

led to an even better score of 133 hours

charging speed is decent especially for

such a big battery

with the 30 watt power delivery charger

we were able to charge from zero to 43

in 30 minutes it's not all about the

gaming

you might want to take the occasional

picture too the rog3 is equipped with a

triple camera setup on the back

there's a 64 megapixel quad bayer main

cam a 13 megapixel ultra wide cam

and a 5 megapixel macro camera the main

camera's photos come out in 16

megapixels and these are perfectly

decent

there's plenty of detail and colors look

natural

we did have some trouble with the hdr

though which is quite inconsistent

even when forced on so dynamic range is

sort of hit or miss

you can capture photos at the full 64

megapixel resolution

though this doesn't offer as much

benefit as you might imagine there isn't

much more detail

and the file size is huge zooming is

available and is advertised as lossless

though it is a digital zoom taken from

the main cam at two times this looks

decent

with a surprising amount of detail

though they're a bit too soft to be

called lossless

portrait shots also come from the main

cam they're very clean looking

with nice subject detection and

separation and convincing defocus

backgrounds

the 13 megapixel shots from the fixed

focus ultrawide cam are perfectly decent

but a bit on the soft side close-up

shots taken with the 5 megapixel macro

cam are okay

the results are usable but the

resolution is nothing impressive

and since focus is fixed you need to use

some trial and error to get a sharp

photo

in low light shots from the main camera

were pretty good

they're surprisingly low noise good

enough detail

and decent dynamic range there isn't

night mode supported here

which you can set to be enabled

automatically if the conditions are dark

enough

depending on the particular scene night

mode can be surprisingly effective

often managing to bring back a lot of

detail from the dark shadows

the ultra wide cam's performance is

pretty poor in low light as expected

because of its dim lens if you turn on

night mode you may end up with a usable

result

these take a long time to shoot and

don't expect anything mind blowing

selfies are taken with the 24 megapixel

quad bayer front facing cam

these six megapixel shots are good focus

is fixed

but these tend to come out sharp with

nice detail

colors and dynamic range 4k videos from

the main cam can be taken in up to 60

fps

and quality is quite decent you get a

good amount of detail with vibrant

colors

the sharpening might be a bit overdone

though there is even an option to

capture video with this camera and 8k

a trendy feature these days and on top

of that this mode has electronic

stabilization which we haven't seen

before

the quality here is great you can shoot

in up to 4k at 30fps with the ultrawide

camera

these are pretty good though the dynamic

range is noticeably more narrow than the

videos from the main camera

even though there is no optical

stabilization to be found on these

cameras

in fact all of the footage looks quite

smooth if you turn on the electronic

stabilization

it does a splendid job there's an extra

stable eis called hypersteady which only

works in 1080p resolution

it is very impressive though effectively

smoothing out things like running

so that's the asus rog phone 3. from top

to bottom the upgrades it brings are

pretty much

geared toward improving the gaming

experience you get a large and

responsive

high refresh rate oled display a cool

looking gamer style design

awesome stereo speakers tuned toward the

audio you'd hear in games

excellent battery life and a cutting

edge chipset that can give high class

performance

over long gaming sessions there are a

couple of nitpicks to be had here though

first is the camera quality which isn't

flagship level

but for the gamer crowd i don't think

it's such a high priority and it gets

the job done

the other thing i want to mention here

is the focus on a super high refresh

rate

the high fps is awesome for gaming but

since it's up to game developers to

enable it on their end

you're never sure whether a game would

support 144 fps

or not the play store doesn't make it

easy to find the right game titles

either

so you have to rely on info posted on

forums online

and things change all the time

overall though i think this phone offers

an awesome premium gaming experience

that pushes the boundaries of what's

possible on an android device

it's not for everyone but for the

hardcore mobile gamers out there

the rog phone 3 deserves a

recommendation

thanks for reading guys stay safe and

see you on the next one



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