ASUS just introduced the ROG Phone 8, the company’s latest gaming smartphone at the CES 2024, after rumours. It packs the same 6.78-inch Full HD+ AMOLED HDR 1-120Hz LTPO display with 165Hz refresh rate option for gaming, up to 2500 nits peak brightness and is powered by Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC.
This has a 15% thinner, lighter body and the screen has thinner bezels, but ASUS says that it has not sacrificed the performance, and has a premium design and durability.
The phone has Rapid-Cooling Conductor design, part of the advanced GameCool 8 thermal design-conducts heat directly from the processor to the back cover.
Additionally, the all-new AeroActive Cooler X clip-on cooler is now 29% smaller and promises 1.2X higher thermal efficiency, reducing the back cover temperature by as much as 26°C.
The phone has a 50 MP main camera with Sony sensor, 6-Axis Hybrid Gimbal Stabilizer 3.0, 13 MP ultrawide camera and a for the first time an ROG phone has a 32MP 3X telephoto lens with built-in OIS.
ASUS says that it can preserve every detail in photos, providing clearer images even at up to 30X zoom. During video shooting, the telephoto camera employs adaptive EIS to produce stable results with up to a 10X zoom. The front 32 MP ultrawide selfie camera with RGBW sensor and has a field of view (FoV) that’s been increased from 73° to 90°.
Gamers can effortlessly shift a game to the background with Background Mode, or capture key moments with X Capture. The intuitive Al Grabber for text capture and X Sense can provide tips and assistance when needed. Al Grabber can now also grab text directly from games using Machine-Learning Recognition technology, and X Capture and X Sense 2.0 now support more new top games. Other Al-powered features include Semantic Search using natural language in the Gallery, Launcher and Settings.
The new ROG Phone 8 series includes unique customizable elements, including the Aura RGB Lighting logo (ROG Phone 8) and Anime Vision Mini-LED 341-element display that can display preset or user-created animations, and users can also unlock secret animations by touching their phone back-to-back with another ROG Phone 8 Pro / Pro Edition. In addition, the company says that it is the world’s first IP68-compliant gaming smartphone, built to resist dust and water ingress.
The phone has a dual-cell 5,500mAh battery, which is slightly smaller than the 6000mAh battery compared to the Phone 7, but it still has 65W HyperCharge fast charging for full charge in 39 minutes and also comes with 15W Qi wireless charging.
ASUS ROG Phone 8 and Phone 8 Pro specifications
6.78-inch (2400×1080 pixels) Full HD+ 1-120Hz LTPO (max 165Hz for gaming) Samsung E6 AMOLED 10-bit HDR 20:9 aspect ratio display, up to 2500 nits brighness, 107.37% DCI-P3 / 145.65% sRGB / 103.16% NTSC, Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection
Octa Core Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 4nm Mobile Platform with Adreno 750 GPU
12GB / 16GB / 24GB LPDDR5X RAM with 256GB / 512GB / 1TB (UFS 4.0) storage
Android 14 with ROG UI
Dual SIM (nano + nano)
50MP rear camera with 1/1.56″ Sony IMX890 sensor, f/1.9 aperture, 6-axis Gimbal stabilization, 13MP ultra-wide camera, 32MP 3x telephoto sensor, OIS (8MP photos after pixel binning)
32MP front-facing camera, 90° FoV
3.5mm audio jack, dual speakers, 5-magnet stereo speaker, Dirac Virtuo for Headphone Spatial Sound, Tri-microphones with ASUS Noise Reduction Technology
In-display fingerprint sensor
Dimensions: 163.8×76.8×8.9mm;Weight: 225g
5G SA/NSA, Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 7 802.11 be, Bluetooth 5.4, GPS/GLONASS/Beidou, Galileo(E1+E5a), QZSS(L1+L5), NavIC(L5), USB Type-C, NFC
Dust and water resistant (IP68)
5500mAh (typical) with 65W Hyper charge fast charging, Quick Charge 5.0 and PD Charging, 15W Qi wireless charging
Pricing and availability
The ROG Phone 8 comes in Rebel Grey and Phantom Black colours and the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition & Pro comes only in Phantom Black.
The ROG Phone 8 is priced at USD 1099.99 (Rs. 91,380 approx.) for the 16GB + 256GB model, Phone 8 Pro costs $1199.99 (Rs. 99,685 approx.) for the 16GB + 512GB model and the ROG Phone Pro edition costs $1499.99 (Rs. 1,24,610 approx.) for the 24GB + 1TB model. The AeroActive Cooler X costs 99.99.
It will roll out starting from the Spring of 2024, said the company. No details about the India launch yet.