I Played 4 Games For 3 Straight Hours On This Phone, But My Fingers Shut Down Before It Did

• The ASUS ROG Phone 2 is priced at RM3,499/SGD1,144 for the 512GB variant, RM4,499/SGD1,471 for the 1TB variant.
• It is packaged with a massive 6,000mAh battery, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855+ processor and up to 1TB of storage depending on which version you get.

Over the years, gaming while on-the-go, or rather mobile gaming as an industry itself has grown massively.

We’re no longer just playing games like Flappy Bird, Snake or even Bounce.

Even console games or series have jumped onto mobile phones to give players the “choice” to play whenever or wherever they want. For example, the recently released Call of Duty Mobile.

However, to play a game while moving about means that your device will have to tick a few boxes (at least to me). They’ll need to have a decent display, powerful specs and a long-lasting battery. 

Before we get into how the ROG Phone 2 fared in that aspect, here are its specs:

Gaming All Night Long

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As I’m writing this piece, I constantly have my mum’s nagging voice behind me telling me to stop playing my games at 10 PM and head to bed.

But as a gamer, I’m sure we’ve gotten in trouble most of the time with our parents or our significant others who want us to stop playing a game.

With the ROG Phone 2, the trouble is multiplied because I can still play COD in bed.

In my short time with the phone, I was able to game non-stop for 3 hours on the phone.

I also didn’t just play a single game on it. I alternated between a few games, COD Mobile, Asphalt 9, RO Mobile, and Downwell, leaving the others running in the background when I switched.

According to ASUS, the phone can last up to 7 hours when playing PUBG Mobile. Considering the game can be played on a wide variety of devices including mid-rangers, it does sound a little reasonable in my opinion.

Whenever I played games on the phone for a few minutes, it got slightly warm to the touch. While it wasn’t unbearable, it was not comfortable, to say the least. 

Using the bundled AeroActive Cooler did improve it slightly. I do believe having all the settings tuned to maximum was one of the reasons that the phone was hotter than usual.

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Tuning the settings to not fully utilise the CPU was neat as I was able to reduce power consumption when playing less graphic-intensive games.

Due to that, I was able to make the phone last to 3 hours with close to no lags and stutters.

Lightning Fast Charging

In this day and age where convenience is king, I was quite saddened that the phone did not come with wireless charging.

Using the proprietary charger, I was able to charge the phone from 5% to 100% in 1 hour and 40 minutes. Considering the phone comes with a massive 6,000 mAh battery, that was quite impressive.

As per most phones with fast charging nowadays, it’s always a good idea to not overcharge them since they charge so quickly anyway. Wake up, plug it in your charger, go through your morning routine, and you’ll have more than enough power to last you till noon.

The phone even lasted me two full days from a full charge with just normal daily usage; using it for WhatsApp, Facebook, Waze and other daily apps proved to be no match for the phone. This sparked joy for me, considering my current phone (Samsung Galaxy Note8) can barely last me a day.

Refresh Rate Goodness

While gaming phones nowadays do come equipped with better displays than their predecessor, we’re getting more phones with refresh rates up to 120Hz.

Dictionary Time: A 120Hz refresh rate means the display refreshes 120 times a second, and it means the image gets updated faster.

However, the ROG Phone 2 was the very first phone I’ve used with 120Hz and the difference was astounding. Gaming, movie watching and basic everyday use were faster and more responsive. You don’t even have to wait for a split second for keys to register when you are typing a message.

If you are someone that prioritises speed, then a display with a higher refresh rate will change how you view things on mobile phones.

Subpar Camera

While I have plenty to praise about the phone, it comes with its fair share of drawbacks too. One of them is the camera. Compared to other flagships of the year, its camera does falter slightly.

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Some of the pictures turned out slightly warped, not in a fish-eye effect, but slightly warped at the edges. This might be the AI aggressively enabling portrait mode.

Low-light photography was a hit and miss as well.

If mobile photography is not your main reason for a new phone, then this should be a phone worth your consideration.

Verdict

Personally, I found the ASUS ROG Phone 2 a joy to use.

As a gaming phone, it does what it needs to do, and then some. The ability to tweak your phone settings and add an external fan to improve its cooling is great for gamers.

If you wished, ASUS also provides a boatload of other accessories that you can purchase separately.

You can even turn it into a switch-like console with its external controllers. Unlike a certain brand that claims their phone is better than the Switch.

VP Verdict is a series where we personally try and test out products, services, fads, and apps. Want to suggest something else for us to try? Leave a comment here or send the suggestion into our Facebook page.

• You can find out more about the ASUS ROG Phone 2 here.