hey um yeah can i call you back i'm just shooting a video right now
yeah it's the uh it's the rog phone 2. it's like
kind of a phone but then it's also kind of like a gaming console
yeah it's got like really powerful massive battery a bunch
of cool accessories uh yeah no it's it's
pretty neat um i mean i'm not sure that i would buy it or
anything but there's definitely gonna be people who are going to go like absolutely ape this thing
um anyway yeah i gotta go um yeah yeah
see you later love you yeah okay bye
uh editor's note can you cut that part out
but what you shouldn't cut out is our sponsor for today's video ifixit
ifixit's protect toolkit gives you the tools you need to tackle any electronics
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and get yours today now whether you've experienced a 120 hertz display on a
mobile device or not the 6.6 inch HDR
OLED panel on the rg phone 2 is going to
turn your head this combination can be legitimately described as a visual treat
in every scenario we tried with the surprisingly blob free interface feeling
just buttery smooth and thanks to the doubled 240 hertz
touch pulling rate nearly instantaneously responsive
but then you hit an lte dead zone or something not that i'm blaming the phone
and like i don't think i have felt like my mobile
connection has been such a bottleneck on my phone since 3g i guess ASUS thought
that might be jarring too because the out of the box refresh rate is just 60
hertz that's good for battery life too i guess but honestly it doesn't really
need the help despite the rg phone 2's impressive specs including the binned
snapdragon 855 plus and up to 12 gigs of
RAM thanks to its 6 000 milliamp hour
battery this thing got me through two work days comfortably on a single charge
it lasted for 13 straight hours in geekbench 4's battery life test and even
if it did run low at a critical juncture its quick charge 4.0 compatible and even
features two charging ports if you want to charge while you get your game on and
you can really get into your game on this thing because man
these speakers they're truly something special and i'm not just talking like
yama and they get like real dark and loud brah
because yeah they do get real duck and loud but
somehow ASUS managed to provide a shockingly wide and detailed soundstage
with just two on-board speakers you'll run into a little distortion as you
crank them up to full volume but they are
surprisingly good and combined with the beautiful 10-bit display this thing is
fantastic for watching movies which isn't to say that the experience
is perfect nothing is the camera like on every gaming phone
we've tried is just not that great
it's clearly based on high-end hardware i mean you can tell thanks to the detail
captured in this comparison shot against my daily driver note 9 and the natural
bokeh in this shot of Yvonne for instance absolutely enhances the look of
the image so no the problem just boils down to the typical ASUS things great
hardware bass ackward software now to their credit ASUS avoided the over
sharpening pitfall that traps so many other still learning phone makers but
they fell victim to rookie mistakes in their color science look how unnatural
the green in these trees is my wife's skin tone is very unnatural
here and even in HDR capture mode the
dynamic range in this image is so so at
best and i feel like i have to mention this the quick launch shortcut i mean
yes it has one but whoever decided that
double clicking the volume down key
should launch the camera should be sent back to user interfaces 101 not only is
it clunky it doesn't even work if the phone is unlocked or when you're
listening to music so there is no excuse
for not having a quick launch these days that makes sense
apple by the way guys get subscribed and stay tuned for our review of their new
phone as well for now let's keep going with the other things that aren't perfect about this one the underscreen
fingerprint sensor still a step forward compared to it being on the back but it
just isn't as reliable as the ones from oneplus or samsung the OLED screen while
very bright can't go as dim as a note or
an iphone which can be fatiguing late at night
there's a gap where the screen meets the body that junk can get stuck in the back
is so slippery that if your hands are dry you run the risk of it literally
sliding off of your hand the port cover on the secondary type c connector isn't
captive so it'll probably get lost the first time you use it the background
during phone calls is such cringe wow
the headphone jack thank you for including one though is placed where the
right-handed population will find it gets in the way in both vertical and
horizontal orientations and despite ASUS
claims of 20 millisecond haptic feedback response time just
tapping the calculator was noticeably slower than other phones that i've used
but at the end of the day this isn't just a
phone is it this is a gaming phone for
gamers so what is it like then for gaming well i don't know because i ran
out of angry bird bucks or whatever so i'm gonna kick this one over to Anthony
actually it's pretty great i'm not much of a mobile gamer myself but it was a
pretty enjoyable experience without any attachments the air triggers
gave me what felt like actual buttons the configurable pressure sensitivity
responds with a haptic tap on both the downstroke and the upstroke and you can
assign them to any on-screen button with a swipe from the left and a tap of the
air trigger button it's seriously so good that i could be
fooled into thinking they're tack switches and through a combination of
the touchscreen and triggers at least in shooters i found that i was
actually more accurate with this setup than i would have been with a real
gamepad let that sink in for a moment furthermore the screen and the
positionality of the audio are so good that i often forgot that i was looking
at a phone while playing pubg until i noticed my neck was cramping up from
looking down at it for so long and i could spend a long time looking down at
it depending on what i'm playing 60fps games like pubg gave me roughly a 10
drain per hour while high refresh rate games like minecraft with the visuals
cranked lasted me about 4 hours and 20 minutes at full bore and what's nice
about that is that you can choose your bore ASUS armory crate app lets you set
up each game on your phone to use as much or as little CPU speed as you want
with preset thermal limits to taste remember most of a CPU's peak energy
draw and heat output will be in that last push to reach its maximum speed so
setting a cap will mean that even the most demanding games can last quite a
while if you're willing to put up with a lower frame rate if you want to go the
other way the phone is capable of achieving peak performance on its own in
spite of its passive internal cooling but the included aeroactive cooler 2
accessory allows it to maintain those speeds at lower temperatures which means
it's less likely to ever thermal throttle and it goes fast i can max out pubg and
get a solid 60 FPS while minecraft's support for high refresh rates lends it
to getting to around 90 plus with typical minimums of 70 and that's with
the settings cranked on 24 chunks it does over 100 all day on 16 chunks
it's quite an experience if you've never had the pleasure of actually getting
good frame rates on a phone for me though touch screens only get me so far
i need something a little extra to enjoy mobile gaming and that's where the kunai
comes in the controller works on both Android and pc via bluetooth direct usb
connection or its neatly integrated 2.4 gigahertz rf dongle and if your game
doesn't support a physical controller you can set up your own button mappings
to on-screen touch controls just like you can with the air triggers and when i
first saw this thing that it comes with i thought it was just a separate bumper
case but no under these rubber covers are two rails and
the controller just happens to have this joy-con thing going on
slide them up off the rails slide them on
to these and now you've got a kind of awkward but
still perfectly usable nintendo switch style setup it gets even more ridiculous
if you then slot it into the twin view dock 2 accessory like
can you imagine taking a phone call with this thing i'll let Linus finish up with
his thoughts on the rest of the ecosystem hello
thanks so yeah
therein lies the problem as cool as all this stuff is i mean you've got
two screens on a phone with a battery integrated into the thing and a cooling
fan for good measure but like who is this bulky attachment for really
people don't just buy phones specifically to play games
do they i mean i don't in a given day i might play a
game or two but i talk to people on the phone
text take pictures edit videos for Linus cat
tips pull up references and do research when i'm not at my desk and of course i
read on the toilet oh don't look at me like that you do it
too yeah so
sorry my watch went off hey siri mute my
notifications to see your notifications swipe down from the top of your apple
watch face how's this basic so they're five generations into this thing
oh god hey siri mute my watch media volume set to 0
thanks but don't lie you do it too
and the thing is shut the [ __ ] up i can do all of that stuff and game on
any flagship phone and i can do it without all these fancy attachments so
with that in mind there are some usability compromises that ASUS had to
make in spite of their no compromises claim
honestly the vibe i kind of get is that ASUS set out to build a game console
first and a phone second which might not
be a terrible idea like guys hit me up if you're into the idea of a
secondary Android device that you use for just gaming i mean
in principle it's not that much crazier than having a phone and a nintendo
switch in your bag is it yeah it is cause i heard a lot of the young kids
today play Android games so if you're one of those i guess the rog phone 2
looks pretty spec fabulous whether you're talking using it as your daily
driver phone slash game console or even as a secondary device just for gaming
this is hands down the best mobile Android gaming experience that we have
seen yet but that recommendation needs to come with an asterisk because if you
take a lot of pictures or videos like i
had users in our comments just on youtube stories specifically call out
the potato video quality when i uploaded things with this
you might want to consider just buying a galaxy or a pixel and water
cooling it instead seriously that's a thing we did a video on phone water
cooling go check it out but now before you check out our sponsor for today's video
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link below and pick them up now so thanks for watching guys really hope
you enjoyed this video and we will see you in our next mobile phone review our
next video probably won't be a phone but it is like september october there's
a lot of phone stuff happening right now hmm