In the past, the gaming phone market was a popular and competitive sector where businesses were constantly coming up with new and unusual ways to make their phones ideal for mobile gaming. Since the Asus ROG Phone 8 is a symbol of the times, I purposefully used the past tense there.
Asus has no competition when it comes to making the finest gaming phone, and as a result, it doesn’t seem to be trying, especially given Lenovo discontinued its short-lived Legion Duel brand in 2021 and my personal favorite, Black Shark, hasn’t issued a device since 2022.
The Asus ROG Phone 8 appears to be a good gaming phone on paper. It boasts the newest and quickest CPU, a high refresh rate display, and additional gaming features not seen in the majority of Android smartphones. Additionally, it is rather useful for playing mobile games.
In the few games that offered it, the ROG handled higher refresh modes with ease, and it had no trouble loading the highest graphical settings in any of the games I tested. It also offers you a great deal of control over power allocation, allowing you to concentrate on latency, graphics, energy management, and other aspects of gaming while on the road.
Asus ROG Phone 8 Specs
With a durable and stylish design, the Asus ROG Phone 8 weighs 225g and measures 163.8 x 76.8 x 8.9mm. It was created with gamers in mind. One of its best features is its 6.78-inch AMOLED display, which has an amazing resolution of 2400 x 1080 pixels and a refresh rate of 165 Hz. This makes it ideal for long gaming sessions because it results in more responsive gameplay and smoother images. The display guarantees vivid colors and crisp details whether you’re streaming films or fighting in the newest action game.
The ROG Phone 8 has lightning-fast performance thanks to its advanced Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 CPU and 12GB of RAM. With 256GB of storage, you’ll have more than enough room for your media, games, and apps. The phone, which runs Android 14, provides a seamless and intuitive experience. Additionally, you can play games for hours without worrying about charging because to the enormous 5,500mAh battery. When you do need to recharge, the 65W wired and 30W wireless charging options make it easy and quick.
The ROG Phone 8’s camera arrangement will also appeal to photographers. It has a 13MP ultrawide camera for taking wide-angle pictures, a 32MP telephoto lens for focusing on far-off objects, and a potent 50MP primary camera for taking breathtaking pictures. The 32MP front-facing camera is ideal for video calls and selfies. With stereo speakers and a convenient 3.5mm headphone port for rich audio, the audio is yet another feature. The Asus ROG Phone 8, which comes in fashionable colors like Phantom Black and Rebel Grey, is more than just a phone; it’s a full gaming experience!
Asus ROG Phone 8 Design
Even by its own standards, the Asus ROG Phone 8 looks a lot like a “normal” Android phone, but Asus’ ROG phones have never dabbled in the gaudy design excesses of other gaming phones. No large triggers or nozzles, no angular blocks, no strong ridges.
With a body measuring 163.8 x 76.8 x 8.9 mm, it is undoubtedly large and will definitely stretch your hand. You can play for extended periods of time with it, but it won’t take the place of your gym weight program because it weighs only 225g. However, you may occasionally need to rest your fingertips.
We tested the black phone, but it is also available in gray. Although I didn’t know it until I was writing this review, there is an LED panel on the back. To turn it on, you have to locate the option deep within a menu. Later in the software area, there will be more on that.
Although it’s common for many phones, the ROG’s camera hump on the back protrudes quite a bit, making it difficult to place flat on a table. As you can see from some of the review photos, it is also prone to scuffing.
The phone’s two USB-C connectors, which are occasionally found in gaming phones, are a little more intriguing. This will allow you to charge the Asus ROG Phone 8 while playing games without having a cable protrude at an awkward angle. A 3.5mm headphone jack connects these ports, which are located on the left and bottom edges of the phone, respectively.
On the right side of the phone are two “Air Triggers,” as Asus calls them, a power button, and a volume rocker. Since these are essentially haptic locations that you may tap to perform certain actions while gaming, you might map them to, say, pointing and firing a firearm.
For gaming phones, triggers are nothing new, but I didn’t like the Rog Phone 8’s. These emphatic movements require a firm push to choose, and they take longer and require more effort than other gaming mobile triggers I’ve tested. In fact, I believe that using them actually slowed down rather than accelerated my reaction time when gaming. Furthermore, I would frequently shoot my gun since the triggers would occasionally not work and other times would remain depressed after I pressed them once. This irritated me for obvious reasons, and I gradually stopped using the triggers.
Should you choose to play games in the bathtub, the ROG Phone 8’s IP68 classification protects it against dust and brief submersion in water. However, because of its glass front and back, the phone may not withstand a significant drop.
Asus ROG Phone 8 Display
Since all of its predecessors since the ROG Phone 5 have been this precise size (including the ROG Phone 8 Pro), it is not surprising that the Asus ROG Phone 8 is a bulky boy with its 6.78-inch display.
The majority of Android phones have 1080 x 2400, or FHD+, as their usual resolution. Although it’s not as high as some competitors’ 2K or 4K screens, most games use this resolution, so we won’t deduct points for it.
With an AMOLED panel that produces vibrant colors, HDR10 that enhances image contrast, and a maximum brightness of 2500 nits that illuminates the moon’s dark side, this display is visually appealing and ideal for gaming or streaming videos.
Regarding gaming, a few titles that support high refresh rates benefit greatly from the phone’s 165Hz refresh rate. Even though not many do, 120Hz is a nice bonus.
Asus ROG Phone 8 Software
The Asus ROG Phone 8 has a custom-designed user interface on top of Android 14. Expect darker hues, simpler icon designs (have a look at the camera icon in the review photos!) and app icons with an uneven hexagonal shape because it’s laden with “gamer aesthetics.”
Beyond appearances, this software is really clean and feels a lot like vanilla Android. You may slide down to access quick settings, and apps are kept in an app drawer.
A couple of Asus’s own gaming-specific apps and features have been included. These include Armory Crate, which provides instant access to all of your games, an in-game swipe-up system that allows you to adjust a ton of relevant settings, and a tutorial explaining how the gaming features operate when you first boot up the phone (which is cool but makes the setup processes extremely time-consuming). Though I stopped using Armory Crate after realizing that it was adding another step between me and a game, all of these tools are helpful extras for gamers.
The Asus ROG Phone 8 includes a decent few customization options to tweak the always-on display, icon shapes, numerous animations and the typography. You must locate the AniMe Vision option hidden in the settings menu (or Armory Crate) in order to personalize the LED panel on the rear. With specific graphics to show what’s occurring, you can choose when the screen will light up, such as when a call comes in, while you’re taking a picture, when the camera countdowns, when the battery is charging, and more. Compared to many gaming phone LED panels, it is unquestionably less gaudy.
The Asus ROG Phone 8 AI Wallpaper feature is one that, depending on how you feel about the moral conundrum of generative AI, will either make you ecstatic or furious. You may have noticed a trend here: the phone has an AI picture generator built in, so you may make a wallpaper based on one of several preset themes, such as “Space,” “Cyberpunk,” or “Sci-Fi.”
I created a few different wallpapers using this function, and while they were all appropriately unique, they also had all the problems that come with AI-generated graphics that you have probably seen and laughed at before. Contrary to what I first believed, the phone does not create a fresh wallpaper for you every day. No, although that would be a cool feature. The ROG Phone 8 only creates one for you; to get a new one, you’ll need to go into the phone’s settings and create a new one.
Asus ROG Phone 8 Cameras
I wasn’t expecting much from the Asus ROG Phone 8’s camera because its primary focus is on gaming and performance, but I was pleasantly surprised. It will hold its own, but it won’t take the place of your expensive iPhone.
The primary camera is a 50MP f/1.9 OIS camera that employs a gimbal, which is uncommon for smartphones. Even while standard (1x zoom) phone photos are bright and colorful, especially in well-lit areas, don’t ignore them in less lit areas either.
The camera uses pixel-binning from the 50MP to reduce the resolution to 12.5MP when you take a picture. If you blow up the camera samples below, you’ll notice that the quality rapidly decreases because I was unable to locate a way to activate full-resolution mode, unlike other phones.
The second camera, a 13MP f/2.2 camera with a 120-degree ultrawide lens, is a good choice if you want a larger range. Compared to images captured with the primary camera, this provided a surprisingly high degree of color and quality consistency, allowing you to expand your shot without having to deal with a new color profile. A view of London’s Canary Wharf at various zoom levels illustrates this in the camera section below.
Conversely, the 32MP f/2.4 camera with a 3x zoom telephoto lens allows you to get closer to a topic. These days, zoom lenses like these are sadly uncommon in any mobile phones, so I was shocked to see one in a gaming phone of all places. Nevertheless, they greatly improve the photography experience.
Similar to the ultra-wide camera, this lens maintains the color profile consistency, which is not possible with smartphones, and it offers respectable quality at higher magnification levels.
With digital zoom, which is essentially cutting the zoomed-in image, you may go beyond 3x and up to 30x. As you can see below, the ROG produced respectable results, with distant locations being rather easy to distinguish. However, results for digital zoom photos can vary greatly.
You can’t use a telephoto camera like a macro camera to give your photos a lot of depth of field because it’s not as good for close-ups. The sixth camera sample below shows poor photo quality and a lack of dynamic range. Although I love taking detailed nature photos with zoom cameras, I don’t think the ROG is capable of doing it.
The phone has a 32MP f/2.5 selfie camera on the front. I discovered that photos shot in dimly lit areas had a strange yellow tint, yet this wasn’t the case while I was snapping selfies outside.
With the bokeh being relatively light-touch and the face having few beauty elements applied, portrait mode doesn’t have the same dramatic effect as it does on most smartphones, but it’s still not the end of the world.
You may record video at up to 8K resolution at 24 frames per second or 4K at 60 frames per second. Alternately, you can get 4K at 120 frames per second or FHD at 240 frames per second.
In addition to the normal settings like Pro, time-lapse, panoramic, and night mode, the phone also has a light trails feature that allows you to alter the shutter speed ersatz. Nothing very unusual, however you should definitely search for one of the top camera phones if you want crazy photo modes.
Asus ROG Phone 8 Performance and Audio
You would expect that the Asus ROG Phone 8 would excel in performance since it is a gaming phone. Yes, you would hope so. The phone’s new top-tier Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 CPU comes with 256GB of storage, 12GB of RAM, and more.
The Asus ROG Phone 8 is unquestionably amazing in terms of straight-up speed; I never experienced any lag or problems while playing, and it could easily render the highest graphical settings and fastest refresh rates in games like COD Mobile.
Benchmarks indicated that performance. The phone scored 6,524 in a Geekbench 6 multi-core test. I retested it after 30 minutes of gaming to check whether overheating could be a problem, and the 6,459 number indicates that it doesn’t.
Notably, the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition received a score of 7,200 from our tester, meaning that the higher-end models’ additional RAM will provide you greater power. However, that additional power won’t significantly enhance your gaming experience because the majority of mobile games are designed to function effectively on all devices, even low-end ones.
Asus ROG Phone 8 Battery life
The ROG Phone 8 is powered by a 5,500mAh battery, which is as large as you would expect for a gaming phone.
The Asus ROG Phone 8 battery is easily large enough to keep the ROG Phone 8 running for a whole day if you want to use it like any other phone. This beast will sustain you throughout those lengthy video conferences, so don’t worry.
You will undoubtedly get several hours of gaming time out of the ROG, but even when playing games with lower refresh rates and graphics settings, I found that the battery died more quickly than on the non-gaming phones I tested earlier. To ensure that you can charge quickly and efficiently, two charging connections are included. If you have a compatible charger, you can go from empty to full in less than 45 minutes. The powering is at 65W, which is wonderful and quick.
Additionally, there is 15W wireless charging, which is a helpful addition but certainly won’t be helpful for charging while gaming. If you have devices that charge wirelessly, the 5,500mAh power pack can also be used as a portable power bank thanks to the 10W reverse wireless charging.