Asus is one of few bold companies that have broken the chain of producing singularised designs. Its ROG phones opened a new niche: a device for gamers. Taking this a step further and consolidating its presence in the gaming smartphone sector, the company has come up with the Asus ROG Phone 6. Let’s see how the new Asus ROG Phone 6 holds up in the highly competitive Indian smartphone market.
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Design
The first thing you will notice when you take the phone out of the box is the build quality that uniformly distributes the weight. The phone holds the general ROG’s aesthetic appeal and you find the regular glyphs on the back side, just like previous ROG phones. We got the Phantom Black variant to review. It looks solid yet attractive, in line with ROG’s brand.
On the back of the phone is a ROG Vision screen as well. This colour display strip, known as the ROG Vision OLED, dynamically displays different graphics based on what you’re doing with the phone.
There are two USB-C ports on the base and one on the left side of the ROG Phone 6, allowing you to charge your phone comfortably while playing a game or while connected to an accessory.
Volume, power, and two gaming-specific touch-sensitive shoulder buttons are all located on the right side of the device. Also, the company has kept its 3.5mm headphone jack, which is something we like to use during intense gaming sessions.
The new ROG Phone 6 comes with Gorilla Glass Victus on its screen, making it the first gaming phone to be certified as IPX4 splash-resistant. Still, it would have been nice to see IP68 water and dust protection to give it premium-level protection.
Display
The ROG Phone 6’s display is almost the same as that of its predecessor, since it has a 6.78-inch Samsung AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2448 x 1080.
The refresh rate is one significant area where it has improved. The ROG Phone 6 increases its refresh rate from the 144Hz of the ROG Phone 5 to 165Hz, putting it on par with the best gaming smartphones currently available in the market. The 165Hz refresh rate is the highest till now available in the market. You can feel the extra fluid touch and scrolling experience when you play games or browse content on the screen.
The display comes with HDR10+ support, allowing you to experience movies and games in their highest settings. The colours reproduced on the screen are very bright, vivid, and punchy, matching the requirements for a perfect gaming experience. The display has a brightness level of 800 nits and can peak at 1200 nits. The visibility of the screen outdoors lets you play games and watch any content easily on it.
OS
The new Asus ROG Phone 6 runs on Android 12 and comes with a clean interface. The UI does not come with any preloaded games out of the box, which is a smart move from the company. The entire user interface has a gaming motif, and when you grip the phone’s sides, its performance mode, known as X-Mode, activates with a new wallpaper. With its abundance of motion wallpapers and lock screens, the ROG Phone’s user interface has the potential to impress. One can also switch to a much more generic mode if they want to slow things down.
The best upgrade in the new ROG Phone 6 is the presence of the Armory Crate and Game Genie. The Armory Crate allows you to enter the ROG community, find new high-refresh-rate games, manage your official accessories, and find your games. Asus uses an in-game software called Game Genie. There is essentially no limit to what you can do with it, but the key is to make game-specific profiles, whether they be mapped keys, macros, or crosshair settings.
Performance
The Asus ROG Phone 6 is powered by the latest and most powerful processor, which is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen1 (4nm) chip. The graphics is handled by the Adreno 730 GPU. The presence of eight cores segregates each task and delivers high performance.
We did not come across any lag while gaming or multi-tasking. The games ran at their highest quality and the experience was amazing thanks to the 165Hz refresh rate. The phone kept its cool during intense and long hours of gaming. This is stunning, considering we used it without the cooling accessory; the processor can keep the heat of the phone in check. The processor is further supported by 12GB RAM storage which boosts every task. The new Asus ROG we got to review came with 256GB on-board.
Camera
Coming straight to the point, the cameras of the Asus ROG series are not meant for pro-level photography. Rather, we can say that you will capture some good-quality images instead.
The new Asus ROG Phone 6 also comes with general camera capabilities delivering fine quality images both day and night. The phone has three cameras on the back: a 50MP, f/1.9 main camera, a 13MP, f/2.2 ultra-wide camera, and a 5MP, f/2 macro camera. The autofocus feature is present in the main camera only. We liked the camera’s ability to capture stable and clean images at night, which turned out amazing.
For selfies, there is a 12MP lens which delivers a generous level of details and colour balance while capturing the face. Another thing that we liked about the camera of the ROG Phone 6 is the ability to capture stable videos. Also, one can shoot videos in 8K at 30fps or 4k at 60fps.
Battery
The new Asus ROG Phone 6 ships with 6,000mAh battery power and is very much capable of lasting a full day. During our review, even after long hours of gaming and watching movies, the phone had enough battery power left to make it till night.
The accessories are supposed to drain the battery power, which we were unfortunately unable to try out.
For charging, the company has provided a 65W charger. We felt this could go up a notch to make the future ROG phones charge more quickly, considering that they are gaming phones. Also, in the future, it would be great to see the addition of a wireless charging feature in the Asus ROG phones.
Conclusion
Asus is all set to take the lead in gaming phones, once again, with the addition of the ROG Phone 6. The phone is purely meant for gaming enthusiasts because others will find it heavy to carry around and hold. Other than the camera, the phone delivers the best in every aspect and really keeps alive the tag of a gaming phone.
The ROG Phone 6 will cost you ₹71,999.
Pros: Display, Design, refresh rate, gaming performance, battery life
Cons: Camera, charging speed
Published - November 25, 2022 01:47 pm IST
