The Asus ROG Phone 5 was launched in India on 10th March, 2021. An essential gaming phone with a heavy, dense built, it has considerably improved in some features over its predecessors and is expected to hit the stores by late March with the ROG Phone 5 Pro and ROG Phone 5 ultimate to arrive in April and May respectively.
This phone is a gaming heaven for people and rightly so, with its huge storage capacity and long-lasting battery life. It scores an Antutu score of 718864.
It comes in two variants of 8GB RAM and 128GB storage at Rs. 49999/- and 12GB RAM and 256GB storage model at Rs. 57999.
Table of Contents
Display and Build Quality
The phone comes in two color variants- Storm White and Phantom Black with AnimeMatrix tech on the rear. It consists of a 6.78 inch Samsung AMOLED screen, 144Hz refresh rate, 1200 nits peak brightness, 172.8 x 77.3 x 10.3 mm (6.80 x 3.04 x 0.41 in) body dimension, and a whooping 238gms. It has a resolution of 1080 x 2448 pixels, 395 ppi density, 300Hz touch sampling rate.
The glass back has Gorilla Glass 3 protection while the glass front boasts of Gorilla Glass Victus with an aluminium frame. It comes with an Aero case cover which is comparatively simpler compared to the ROG 3 but is nevertheless chic and sandpaper textured. It is thicker around the bezels but smaller with the ROG Asus Logo at the back with a two colour gradient logo.
It has a smooth finish with no ridges. There is no secondary screen in the Phone 5 as seen in the Pro and Ultimate. The volume button and power button are on the right with air triggers. There is a colored SIM card that stands out. There are two USB ports, one on the side and the other on the end.
Asus, thankfully, has built the 3.5 mm jack on to this model.
Cameras
The device has a triple camera setup with the primary camera being 64 MP, f/1.8, 26mm (wide), 1/1.73″, 0.8µm, PDAF. The ultrawide camera is 13 MP, f/2.4, 11mm, 125˚ and the macro camera of 5 MP, f/2.0.
It includes features like LED flash, panorama, autofocus, HD with video features 8K@30fps, 4K at 30/60/120fps, full HD videos at 1080p and HD videos at 30/60/120/240fps, 720p@480fps; gyro-EIS. There are no pop-up camera features.
The selfie camera is of 24 MP, f/2.5, 27mm (wide), 0.9µm with HD and panorama features and video features of 1080p at 30fps.
The camera features are nothing different or extraordinary from the ROG Phone 3, with an average zoom and mediocre low light photography, it is definitely a phone whose main purpose is its audio-video quality.
Performance/Specs
Coming to the highlights of the model and its variants, it is the performance and specs which definitely takes the piece of cake.
It packs an audio system of ESS Sabre ES9280AC with HyperStream II quad DAC, GameFX audio system, DTX stereo speakers and 2 dedicated amplifiers. (24-bit/192kHz audio).
Gamers get to experience new modes besides X mode – Dynamic Mode (meant for casual gamers), X Mode+, Advanced Mode, and Ultra Durable Mode (helps in extending battery life). It has a copper leading cooling chamber (3D Vapour chamber), ROG clip, ROG Cetra II earphones.
It has, hands down, one of the finest, if not the best multimedia features with loudspeakers, excellent graphics, and smooth fingerplay with loads of buttons. Your gaming experience won’t be disappointing, to say the least.
Software
It is powered by Android 11, ROG UI with an octa-core (1×2.84 GHz Kryo 680 & 3×2.42 GHz Kryo 680 & 4×1.80 GHz Kryo 680) chipset Qualcomm SM8350 Snapdragon 888 SoC (5 nm) and Adreno 660 GPU, UFS 3.1 storage and LPDDR5 RAM.
It comes with many features, especially, Armoury Crate. There are options to choose from and optimization choices, so even if you don’t gel well with the gaming theme, there are other themes to choose from.
Battery
The phone comes with a split battery design Lipo 6000 mAh, nonremovable (3000 mAh each). It is equipped with a 65W charger and can charge a phone fully within an hour. It supports 10W Reverse Charging, power delivery 3.0, Quick Charge 5. It supports proprietary fast charging.
Additional features
It has a fingerprint display (optical), proximity sensor, gyroscope, compass, accelerometer, light sensor.
It supports HTML 5 browser, 4G Volte, Wifi 802, Mobile Hotspot, Bluetooth 5, GPS A-GPS Glonass, NFC, Dual Sim (Nano Sim), RGB light panel on the back, air triggers, accessory connector. It does not have Radio.
In relation to Pro and Ultimate
When compared to ROG Phone 5 Pro and ROG Phone 5 Ultimate, the only part where they differ majorly is the storage (16GB and 18GB RAM respectively and 512GB storage respectively).
The ROG Phone 5 Pro has an extra OLED screen at the rear along with AnimeMatrix tech. The screen can be customized as well and can show notifications. It comes in Phantom Black shade.
The ROG Phone 5 Ultimate comes with a monochrome display instead of Oled like in Pro with huge storage of 512GB. It comes in Storm White shade.
Conclusion
This is the ultimate haven for gamers and tech gurus. With its high-quality audio and video features, it won’t disappoint you at all. With its heavy and dense features, huge storage (as expected from gaming phones), and smooth but eye-catching finish, it is definitely well recommended.
FAQs
Late March, 2021
Phantom Black and Storm White.
It comes in two variants of 8GB RAM and 128GB storage at Rs. 49999/- and 12GB RAM and 256GB storage model at Rs. 57999/.
It supports 5G, but is not available in India