Gaming phones are a relatively small niche, but it shouldn’t be. It usually offers the most powerful hardware available with some additional tweaks and quirks to improve performance further. So even if you’re not an avid mobile gamer, these phones can still do the rest of the smartphone experience very well. But how well? In our Asus ROG Phone 6 Review, we dive deep into its gaming chops and the benefits of a gaming phone in everyday use.
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The ROG Phone 6 is actually the first gaming phone to be officially sold in South Africa (other than through resellers), and we are glad to see it. And if you’re familiar with gaming phones, the one brand that immediately comes to mind is Asus. The ROG (Republic of Gamers) Phone made its debut in 2017. ROG is an extremely popular gaming brand for PC’s, making everything from laptops to displays to dedicated PC hardware.
Design and Build
The ROG Phone 6 design stands out immediately. It doesn’t look like the normal slab of glass and metal you see with almost all smartphones these days. This is a feature in other gaming phone brands as well, like Red Magic or Black Shark. However, the ROG Phone 6 finds a great balance between gaming uniqueness and traditional smartphone design.
The device is only available in black or white, with the white definitely the more striking, albeit more garish. Our black review unit still stands out, however, due to the various RGB flares and light strip on the back.
It can be customised in Settings and works in tandem with the small ‘Dare to Play’ logo on the opposite side, alerting you of incoming calls or notifications. I always have my phone on silent, and found it a great, subtle way to ensure I don’t miss anything. The ROG Phone 6 Pro has a secondary display on the back instead, which is obviously more capable, but the light strip on the ROG Phone 6 still adds the design flare with functionality at a lower price.
The interesting design continues in the hexagonal shape of the camera bump on the back, which extends across the top of the phone but works well with the rest of the design.
As this is a gaming device, the design is built around the assumption that a lot of time will be spent in landscape mode in order to play games. To this end, Asus has included two USB-C ports for optimised gaming. By that, we mean there is one USB-C port at the bottom of the device as per usual and another on the left hand side in the middle so that the user can plug in the charging cable at and still have a gaming accessory hugged around the top and bottom.
Otherwise, the ROG Phone 6 also includes a 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom, something increasingly rare in flagship devices these days. Many gamers prefer wired headsets, so this is great to see. On the right-hand side there is a volume rocker and power button, but more interesting is what is found above and below.
At either end of the right-hand side, or top left and right when in landscape, are shoulder triggers. These are pressure sensitive and mimic shoulder buttons on remote controls, which allows the player to use them instead of on-screen controls, making the gaming experience more immersive and less fiddly.
The ROG Phone 6 is also quite a large device, and slightly thicker than you may be used to (this is to house a very large battery). It also has larger bezels at the top and bottom than you’re used to, but this is for good reason – full surround sound front-facing speakers.
Overall, this is the most unique smartphone design you will currently find on the market. It probably won’t appeal to everyone, but it turns heads and we enjoy interesting designs that depart from the usual drab slabs. It feels expensive in the hand, partly due to its weight, but also due to the premium materials used.
Display & Audio
As previously stated, the ROG Phone 6 is a large device. It has a 6.78-inch OLED display, with a 1080 x 2448 resolution, meaning it has an extremely unique 20.4:9 aspect ratio. The display feels great, however, and the performance it is able to push is extremely impressive. It can run at a 165Hz refresh rate, quicker than even the most expensive smartphones on the market today (the newest Galaxy S23 devices can run at 144Hz).
It is a variable refresh rate panel, though, so keeping it on ‘Auto’ mode is the best way to go. It will automatically change the refresh rate between 60-, 90-, 120-, 144- and 165Hz to help conserve battery life. It will only up the ante to the full 165Hz if the game being played is capable of it, otherwise it will default to 144Hz for gaming. For normal use it will be on 90Hz or 120Hz most of the time, and it will fall down to 60Hz when you are reading content or scrolling through a website.
This display is the most responsive we have ever used, bar none. It helps that it has top-notch internals, but the display has 720Hz touch sampling (how many times the display can register touch input each second), which further makes it feel slick and performant.
Part of that performance is also down to the resolution. While it is ‘only’ Full HD (as opposed to 2K or 4K), this is what gamers prefer at this size, because it can push more frames per second instead of more pixels. And the quality of that display is also brilliant – it delivers rich, vibrant colours which really pop – helping to enhance the gaming experience.
The brightness levels are good, but not great – it reaches 515 nits (for context, some flagships reach around 800 nits now). However, it is more than good enough for the target audience, as you wouldn’t necessarily play games outside in direct sunlight.
While we still prefer traditional fingerprint scanners, the under-display fingerprint scanner is probably the best we’ve used to date. It is quick, reliable and very easy to set up.
The aforementioned speakers above and below the display is another standout. While some may not like the larger bezels, for gaming and content consumption this is the best solution. The audio they produce is far superior to most phones, with great detail and an impressive depth to the sound. One of these doubles as the earpiece, meaning calls are very clear and get plenty loud enough.
All this, of course, is meant to deliver the best gaming performance possible.
Software and Performance
The ROG Phone 6 is powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset. While there are now a couple of phones with the 2023 Gen 2 chip, there isn’t a big difference in performance and is still extremely capable. There is no need to wait for the Gen 2 – this phone delivers truly excellent performance, blazing through everything we could throw at it with ease.
While I am by no means an expert mobile gamer, I still threw the most demanding games at it to fully push it. I’m on a Battle Royale binge lately, so immediately pulled up PUBG Mobile and Call of Duty: Mobile. COD was a particular highlight as it’s fully optimised for this type of device, as is the device for the game. The shoulder triggers made it feel more like a console game than I’ve ever experienced on mobile – it’s a literal game-changer.
The high refresh rate and touch sampling shines through with these games and it delivers an impressively slick and responsive experience.
It is worth noting that we had the version of the phone with 12GB of RAM – there is an 18GB version available as well. I would posit that you don’t need the higher RAM model from my testing, but more power is always welcomed, of course.
Other than gaming, the internal hardware chomped up anything I could throw at it. It handled multi-tasking better than basically any other phone, its gesture controls are superior to any other Android device and not once did I see a single stutter or lag in the software performance.
The software on the ROG Phone 6 is unique, yet very familiar. The company didn’t change the Android 12 software it runs out of the box where it matters in everyday use, but added software features specific to gaming use cases. It certainly looks different, leaning into the gaming aesthetic, but functionally it is basically stock Android.
However, the gaming flare comes through when engaging ‘X Mode’. It changes the colour scheme to red and makes it clear you’re ready to game. It’s not a huge change, but the distinction is appreciated. You can launch games like usual, but Asus would prefer you used the Armoury Crate companion app instead. It offers a wide range of settings to fine tune your experience, while Game Genie offers an extensive toolbar once you’ve started playing.
Battery Life
As you can imagine, battery life is one of the most important aspects for gamers on the go (the same is true with gaming laptops). The ROG Phone 6 is very generous when it comes to battery capacity – it has two 3,000mAh cells, giving a total of 6,000mAh. For context, the much more expensive Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra that was just released has ‘only’ 5,000mAh of capacity.
This massive battery, in conjunction with the 1080p display and smart refresh rate, delivers great battery results. Even when locked to 165Hz refresh rate for the display, you will still get through an entire day, even with gaming included. If you don’t use it for long periods of gaming, however, this is a true 2-day device – we tested this as well and had about 20 percent in charge left after two days of usual use.
When you do run out, just plug the 65W charger into either of the USB-C ports. Unlike many phones these days, it’s included in the box. It charger quicker than mainstream flagships, but not as quick as some new Chinese flagships. It doesn’t offer wireless charging.
Camera
For gamers, the camera setup is not the top priority. Dedicated gaming phones had neglected this aspect of the phone in the past. However, since Asus wants this to be a device that can do everything, significant effort was spent to make this a better experience to users. While the camera performance is mediocre (compared to other flagships), we would think it is still good enough for most people.
We were pleasantly surprised by the performance of the 50MP main sensor and a major improvement over previous gaming phone efforts. Photos taken on the ROG Phone 6 pack a healthy amount of contrast – but at times too much. They’re also heavily sharpened and while this looks great in some scenes, photo purists will appreciate a more dialled-back approach to in-camera processing.
If you’re not a photo purist though, the ROG Phone 6’s new main sensor implementation gives you loads of detail and supremely Instagram-ready shots. As you would expect, it starts to struggle in low-light situations.
While the ROG Phone 6 definitely isn’t the best camera phone, it has the best camera of any gaming phone, despite its bad macro camera, which should be overlooked in favour of the main camera in all but the brightest scenes.
Conclusion
In terms of gaming phones, the ROG Phone 6 is by far the best option. However, we could make a case for this device for non-gamers as well. It excels at the fundamentals, delivering stellar performance, a wonderful display and great battery life. With decent cameras, two USB-C ports and even a headphone jack, there’s a lot to like here.
The ROG Phone 6 delivers a great overall experience, especially for the price. None of its negatives should be a deal-breaker for most, unless you need the best possible camera setup in a smartphone. At its price point, around the R25,000 mark in South Africa, we can’t think of a better overall device.
