Who approaches a mobile of this type knows that we are not dealing with a normal smartphone. This is a phone that is made, firstly, to play games, and, secondly, to make calls and other things that are usually done with smartphones. This is already giving us some clue of what the strengths and weaknesses of the terminal are.
It packs so many gamer-focused specs like a 6.78-inch Full HD+ 165Hz AMOLED display (2448×1080), dual front-facing speakers, the best processor around, 18GB of RAM, and a massive capacity battery. that is planted in the market with a continuous file with respect to what was seen in the Asus ROG Phone 5. Here the novelties are in a change of CPU, a somewhat better camera, the latest software on the market and some gaming incentives that we will discover in the following lines.
Of course, we must not lose sight of the fact that this is a Republic of Gamers (ROG) phone and has been created specifically for games, so it allows you to run such demanding titles as Fortnite, PUBG and CoD Mobile with great ease. However, since we can treat it more like a console than like a mobile phone to use, we must bear in mind that its software is adapted to the game and that its camera, once again, is one of the great burdens of the team. Nothing that will surprise anyone.
Official mobile features
Before we get down to business, we review each and every one of the specifications of the ASUS phone so you can see, at a glance, why it is one of the best gaming phones of the year.
- 6.78″ FHD+ (2448 x 1080 px) AMOLED screen with 165 Hz refresh rate and 720 Hz touch response
- 173 x 77 x 10.3mm / 239 grams
- Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 Processor @ 3.2GHz with Adreno 720 GPU
- 18GB LPDDR5 RAM
- 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage
- Triple rear camera 50 MP + 13 MP Ultra Wide Angle + 5 MP Macro / 8K video
- 12 MP front camera
- WiFi 6E
- Bluetooth 5.2
- 6,000 mAh battery (2 cells of 3,000 mAH) with 65W charging
- Android 12 with ZEN UI 2.0
another planet design
The design follows the line of last year’s ROG Phone 5 series , with minor changes aimed at offering an even more futuristic vision, a natural evolution of last year’s cyberpunk aesthetic. In this case, the Pro model that we have analyzed can only be purchased in white.
This design has been created using a frosted glass back panel where the ROG logo is once again illuminated on the back of the phone. It can display two colors that are mixed with a nice gradient effect, although through the software it supports various lighting schemes to give the terminal a more personal appearance.
But, without a doubt, what stands out the most about this particular model is its ROG Vision PMOLED rear screen , which can display different customizable images for different scenarios such as notifications, calls, starting a game, charging, entering X mode and much more. plus. The brand claims that it has introduced 60 new animations in this panel, but we have not been able to discover all of them.
Beyond the color of its SIM tray, its double USB port, its futuristic camera module or having a 3.5 mm minijack for headphones, the phone boasts two Super Linear 12×16 speakers with 5 symmetrical magnets powered by Cirrus Logic CS35L45 mono amplifiers which, on paper, mean that they deliver powerful, clear, immersive audio.
high speed screen
The ROG Phone 6 Pro has a 6.73-inch Full HD+ AMOLED screen with a resolution of 2448×1080. It’s a great display that’s protected by the latest Corning Gorilla Glass Victus and is on par with panels found on other flagship phones. We do not miss a higher quality at all that implies a higher battery consumption. Colors look bright, it’s a sharp panel with a density of over 400 ppi, and the camera notch is also very small. The screen stretches from edge to edge and it looks great when we are playing games or watching series or movies.
However, the most crucial factor here is your refresh rate. The ASUS gaming phone supports a 165Hz refresh rate , beating its predecessor’s 144Hz, making games that support it look smooth, not the next thing. It is true that it is not a very noticeable jump to the naked eye, but currently there is nothing better in any other panel of the competition.
In addition, it is also beneficial for general phone use, not just gaming. Browsing the web and navigating the phone is very smooth, also due to its 300Hz touch sampling rate. The phone responds much faster to touches than other phones.
Additionally, the brand takes some interesting settings out of developer options and into Display Settings. For example, from this menu we can configure the speed of the animations so that working with the mobile is a much faster experience.
Power to give and give away
This is a phone designed for gaming. Any ROG-branded device will obviously prioritize gaming performance , and in this case, the ROG 6 Pro is one of the best gaming phones of 2022.
Every component of this phone has been designed with gaming in mind. We have tested the version with 18 GB of RAM and we cannot fault it. The mobile ‘flies’, the most demanding Android titles load quickly, and switching between applications is very easy. The powerful processor packed inside the phone, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 is 10% more powerful and efficient than seen in the 8 Gen 1 and, together with the ASUS Zen UI, makes it a hassle-free experience. when navigating through any menu, using any application, leaving dozens of applications in the background and, in short, everything you can ask of the terminal.
We have run our usual tests on the phone and there is no model capable of overshadowing it on the market today. The first example is on Geekbench, where the ASUS ROG Phone 6 Pro scores 1,259 points in the single-core tests and 3,845 in the multi-core test, which is outrageous.
But, as we know that most of you like to see your phone positioned in a ranking, here is the AnTuTu podium. With 1,100,820 points, the technology firm’s phone is positioned as the most powerful phone so far this year . And something tells us that it will be there for a long time.
To minimize possible bottlenecks, the ROG Phone 6 Pro mounts, as we have said, up to 18 GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512 GB UFS3.1 SSD storage, which guarantees smooth performance and that there are no problems of running out of space at the time. minimum, since the mobile, unfortunately, does not have support for MicroSD cards.
We can’t stop talking about Game Genie , the application to control everything that happens on the mobile and that shows all the important information about the device’s hardware and allows you to customize your gaming experience. Swiping from the left of the phone opens the app and allows us to disable notifications while playing and show important information such as FPS and phone temperature.
It also allows you to optimize your phone’s resources for the title you’re playing and activate X mode, which is designed to improve performance at the cost of battery life.
Does it get too hot?
Yes, it is true that this raw power overheats the terminal excessively despite the fact that the internal structure has been renewed to provide even more efficient heat dissipation than in previous generations. The components that generate the most heat are placed centrally between the two batteries, each located on either side of the motherboard, to ensure that the main hot spots are kept out of your fingers while gaming.
The reshaped vapor chamber and extensive graphite sheets also help distribute heat evenly throughout the device to reduce temperatures, but it’s still unavoidable that the phone gets hotter than desirable.
For this reason, we can connect a heatsink, the AeroActive Cooler 6 , equipped with several fans on the back of the phone. It now uses a Peltier cooler that allows the device surface temperature to be reduced by up to 25°C when the most powerful cooling mode is selected. It is powered by the USB on the side of the phone (lower, if we use the mobile horizontally) and helps protect the terminal from high temperatures when we play for more than an hour.
Amazing cameras
It is true that we are never going to demand a large photographic set from a mobile of this type. but we have to say that we expected less from the triple camera of the ASUS ROG Phone 6 Pro . It has a 50 MP SONY IMX766 main camera that, despite not being a telephoto lens, allows a lossless 2x magnification that, as we have seen, works very well when the light is good. In low-light conditions, it will switch to 2x digital zoom based on the 12.5 MP mode to capture enough light, but it’s noticeably faltering.
This main sensor is complemented by a 13 MP ultra-wide-angle camera with a 125-degree field of view and real-time distortion correction and a 5 MP Macro lens. At the video level, it is possible to record clips in 8K, but we recommend that you do not do it too much because the mobile does not have a stabilizer and you are only going to get more memory space on the mobile.
That said, the ROG Phone 6 Pro takes excellent daytime photos , and the mobile’s focusing system is especially practical, allowing us to focus on the subject to be photographed and take quick bursts of shots. The photos with natural light that we have taken with this device are comparable to those that we can obtain with a top of the range last year, such as a Samsung Galaxy S21 or a Huawei P40, something very remarkable for a phone that, let us remember, born by and to offer the best gaming experience.
However, not everything is perfect and there is a certain oversaturation with the Ultra Wide Angle sensor and with the 2x zoom that we remember, despite not being optical, it is quite good.
At night , things change. If we use the main sensor, the phone defends itself quite well, but as soon as we try to zoom or work with the Ultra Wide Angle, we see how much noise appears and the scenes are not as sharp as those offered by other high-end smartphones. On the other hand, nothing that we did not expect.
Curiously, the front camera sees its resolution reduced by half compared to the ROG Phone 5. It is something unusual in the market, but you will not use it much more than to hold video calls and take the occasional selfie. For this, it offers quality more than enough but it cannot be bought with the front lenses of other more premium mobiles .
Battery as expected
We knew that a phone with these characteristics could not be satisfied with the same battery capacity as a ‘normal’ phone and that is why ASUS repeats the strategy of mounting two independent cells in the 3,000 mAh smartphone that, together, add up to a total of 3,000mAh
This decision is not trivial. Not only does it reduce the charging temperature, allowing for 65W charging, but even discharging will produce less heat while gaming by dividing the heat between two cells, and not in the same component.
And, regarding this fast charge, it also represents an evolution with respect to the previous model, now by simply connecting the smartphone to the current (with the charger included in the box), we can fill all the energy of the phone in 42 minutes.
It is evident that, if we use the sun mobile to call, surf the nets and play for a short time a day, it will last us almost more than 48 hours without a problem. But this is not a smartphone for that and we have already seen that its main objective is to make us spend long gaming sessions in front of the screen.
If this is the case, do not expect to reach the end of the day with the mobile on. In our tests we have spent two hours playing FIFA 22 with the phone, PUBG Mobile and playing half an hour of YouTube videos and at night the battery percentage asked us to plug the mobile into the power. These are acceptable figures taking into account the brutal characteristics of the game phone and its different modes to squeeze the power to the fullest.
The gaming extras
The same Aeroactive Cooler 6 heatsink that we talked about before, has different RGB lights, fans and 4 very practical physical buttons that convert the accessory, in addition to being a cooling system, into a bluetooth control for the device. A complete 2 x 1.
To this we add the AirTrigger 6 control system that allows the user to map up to fourteen specific touch points on the screen simultaneously. If we add the buttons on the ASUS accessory, we have a total of eighteen touch inputs in addition to the screen. Along with these possibilities we have 10 different movement controls, to choose the gestures that best suit your style of play.
In addition, the smartphone maintains the “X+ Mode” for games that, as we have said, allows us to boost performance and focus all system resources on offering the maximum possible power so that we do not suffer a single hint of “lag” when we are in departure. Raise touch sensitivity, improve connectivity and raise the refresh rate to the maximum.
As if this were not enough, the mobile focuses most of its specifications on a horizontal use of the device . For this reason, it offers an ergonomic side-loading design, the latest AirTrigger 6 technology (with even more buttons and movement input gestures), double front speakers so as not to cover the sound when we play in this way, multiple WiFi antennas around the mobile Wi- Fi and a noise cancellation system with three microphones so that nothing interrupts our chats. We add a more powerful vibration system than in previous generations, implying 20% less consumption.
Our opinion
Difficult to fault a phone so well designed for the purpose it wants to accomplish. If you are looking for a smartphone that rivals desktop consoles and has plenty of power, there are few better options on the market. There is no phone on the market that offers better performance right now and its gaming extras are a plus for those who want to spend long gaming sessions on a mobile device.
In addition, its cameras have surprised us for the better and it shows that the brand has put more effort into propping up this component, the usual Achilles heel of gaming smartphones. To this we must add an exceptional battery and software designed by and only exclusively for the game, which in turn can become one of the weak points of the phone.
And it is that, on the other side of the scale, we have to emphasize that it is not a mobile for everyone . Its operating system can be too confusing for those who are used to more normal versions of Android and, even if it is updated to the latest version, it is difficult to get hold of it.
As with smartphones of this type, it is too bulky and heavy , but you have to make room for a large battery and its cooling systems. It is not cheap either, but that is something that already depends on the pocket and the budget of each one.
Of course, as a gaming phone, there is nothing better on the market right now .
Its price is 1329 euros and can be purchased from next month in our country.