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00:00Every phone is a gaming phone, really. I mean, even my LG G3 from six years ago
00:06plays Call of Duty Mobile, albeit on low settings, but it works. So is there really
00:11any point in buying something like the ROG Phone 5, a big, flashy, overclocked
00:16gaming phone, when any other flagship phone like the Galaxy S21, which is
00:21powered by the same Snapdragon 888 chip, can play the same games? Well, yeah, I
00:26think so. I've been using the ROG Phone 5 for the last couple of weeks and it's
00:30incredible. It really is. It is, without a doubt, the ultimate gaming phone. That
00:35doesn't mean it's perfect, but if you're an enthusiast or even a pro gamer, you're
00:40gonna have to buy one of these. With a huge 6.78 inch, 144 Hz screen,
00:45the Snapdragon 888, up to 16 gigs of fast RAM, and a massive 6,000
00:50million power battery, the specs alone are insane. But what really makes this
00:54stand out, for me at least, are the air triggers. I'm telling you, you can't go
00:58back to regular on-screen buttons after you've tried this. Plus the range of
01:03accessories, including the new ROG Aero Cool 5, which just slots in beside the
01:08second USB-C port on the side, not only helps keep the phone cooler for longer
01:13gaming sessions, I mean you're literally sticking a cooling fan on the back of
01:16the phone, but it also gives you an extra two buttons you can assign. I would
01:20definitely recommend picking one of these up if you do go for an ROG Phone 5,
01:23and it is the only way to unlock the X Mode Plus option, which actually over
01:28clocks the chip. So the hardware is impressive, but it's also the software. We
01:32get Android 11, which can be as close to stock or heavily ROG customized as
01:37you'd like, and this new Performance Manager in the Armory Creek gives you a
01:41ridiculous amount of settings and options to tinker with. Clock speeds,
01:44frame rates, fans, game profiles, literally everything you could want is here. Or if
01:50on the flip side it all looks way too much, then you can just stick with the
01:53preset modes and maybe leave it on dynamic, and then just never worry about
01:57it. It's not just the Armory crate that gives you this over-the-top
02:00customization. In the regular phone settings, under the display options, you
02:04even get these animation speed settings, which are usually hidden within the
02:08phone's developer options. I like to drop these down to 0.5 times to make
02:12everything feel a little bit snappier. Not that this phone really needs it. And
02:16the crazy thing is, it's not even that expensive. The ROG Phone 5 starts from
02:21800 euros and you get 8 gigs of RAM with 128 storage. This guy with 16 gigs of RAM
02:27and 256 storage will save back a thousand euros, but that's not bad at all.
02:32Although bear in mind all the accessories, including the AeroCool fan,
02:36will cost you extra. And if you're wondering, didn't we just have the ROG
02:40Phone 3 last year? What happened to the 4? Well, in Chinese culture the number
02:454 has some superstitious connotations with death, so they just like to avoid
02:51that. So we've jumped right ahead to the Phone 5. Speaking of last year's ROG Phone 3,
02:56what kind of upgrades are we getting with the 5? Well, the
03:00headline is the upgrade from the A65 Plus to the 888 chip, which is about 10
03:05to 15 percent faster. We also now get a 16 gig of RAM option, up from 12. Plus
03:10they've improved the cooling, both of the phone and also the new AeroActive
03:13cooler. And software-wise, they've added this new performance manager in the
03:17armory crate. The screen's also slightly bigger, now at 6.78 inches, but we're
03:22getting the same 144 Hertz Full HD Plus AMOLED panel and also the same 1
03:27millisecond response time. Although the touch sampling rate is now 300 Hertz, up
03:32from 270, but you'd be hard-pressed to notice. We also get the latest Gorilla
03:36Glass Victus on the front and the slightly older Gorilla Glass 3 on the
03:40back. One downside though of the screen is that it's not an LTPO panel like you
03:45might get on the Galaxy S21 range. So unlike the Samsung, which can actually
03:50adapt its refresh rate between I think 10 and 120 Hertz, so based on what you're
03:54doing it can change it and therefore save your battery. With this you can
03:57choose between 90, 120 or 144 and on auto mode it will switch based on what the
04:02app needs. But that's about it, it doesn't dynamically go all the way down if you
04:06are on a sort of static screen to save battery. Although the always-on display
04:10is set to 30 Hertz. We're also getting the exact same 6,000 million power
04:14battery which is still huge but crucially it's actually now split into
04:17two 3,000 million power cells and also supports much faster 65 watt charging
04:23up from 30 watts last year. They've also improved the dual front-facing speakers.
04:27They sound absolutely incredible actually and your hands don't cover them
04:31up which is nice.
04:35Plus you have this three and a half mil headphone jack that supports high-res
04:39audio. Also the inner nerd in me was quite excited when they confirmed that
04:44this does support the latest Wi-Fi 6e although you will need a compatible
04:48router for it and of course we're getting sub 6 5G support with
04:52this as well. So if you've seen or used one of the ROG phones before then this
04:56cyberpunk-y design will be pretty familiar to you. This time we're getting
05:00in storm white or phantom black like I have here. The bezels are relatively
05:04chunky but that does make it a little bit more comfortable to hold. Plus it
05:08leaves room for the bigger front firing speakers and also an LED notification
05:12light. Plus we're getting an optical in-screen fingerprint reader. Around the
05:16back there's this glossy curved glass body. It's completely smooth but with a
05:20textured look underneath. Refined yes, subtle not so much with this giant ROG
05:26all-seeing eye on the back that lights up. Although it can now display two
05:30colors at the same time for a gradient look. Jump into the armory crate and
05:33there's eight different lighting schemes and a full RGB color wheel. It is kind of
05:38silly. I mean when you're actually using the phone you can't see it but it's a
05:41bit of fun and who doesn't love a bit of go faster RGB in their gaming setup.
05:45And that's the point. This whole phone has been designed around gaming and
05:49using it in landscape mode. For example the second USB C port on the side means
05:54you can charge it or clip on accessories without anything getting in the way of
05:57your hands. In fact this side port is USB 3.1 Gen 2 whereas the bottom one is a
06:03slower USB 2. Also the front firing speakers, the layout of the quad
06:07microphones and also the slightly offset selfie camera so your thumbs
06:11aren't covering it if you're streaming. It's all incredibly well designed. Now
06:16these aren't new but one of the best parts of the ROG phone are the air
06:19triggers. Just swipe in to bring up the game genie then tap on air triggers and
06:23you can then customize how the two shoulder buttons will interact with the
06:27game. You simply drag the left and the right buttons on screen so then as you
06:30press the air trigger that then triggers the on-screen button. And in games like
06:34Call of Duty where you can assign these to looking down the scope or firing or
06:38even reloading it's so helpful. You can even split each button into a dual
06:43partition button so you then have four shoulder buttons although this does
06:47half the size of the button which makes it a little bit trickier to tap. And if
06:50you pair these air triggers with the two extra buttons on the cooler or even the
06:54extra rear buttons on the Pro and Ultimate models of the ROG phone you've
06:57got so many ways of avoiding the on-screen virtual buttons. As for the
07:01camera well this won't take long. We get the same 64 megapixel Sony IMX 686
07:08camera as last year along with a 13 megapixel ultra-wide and everyone's
07:12favorite a 5 megapixel macro. No telephoto lens and using last year's
07:18sensor in the main camera this is definitely the ROG phone's biggest
07:21letdown. And again it just feels like an afterthought.
07:24Asus spent all of about 30 seconds talking about the camera in their
07:28briefing. They do say it's slightly improved from last year's phone and in
07:31good light the photos aren't bad just a bit average really. Although we do now
07:35get 8k video at 30fps which is a nice extra although I'm not sure how often
07:40you'd actually use that. It's tricky I mean I do appreciate that Asus are
07:45putting all their efforts and resources into making the best gaming phone
07:48possible but chances are if you're gonna spend 800, 1000 pounds or euros on this
07:53it's probably gonna be the only phone you have in your pocket so it is still
07:57quite important for the camera to be good and so yeah I think this is
08:00probably the biggest issue I have with the phone. So there's room for
08:04improvement but the priority here of course is performance and importantly
08:08sustained performance thanks to the better cooling of the phone. This has a
08:11whole new thermal structure inside where the hottest components are placed in the
08:15middle of the phone and then the reshaped vapor chamber cooler and the
08:18graphite sheets help to then spread the heat evenly. But the question is does any
08:23of this really make a difference to performance? Well here's the results from
08:27a 20-minute 3DMark wildlife stress test. On the left just look at the S21 Ultra's
08:32lowest loop score and also its stability percentage compared to the two ROG phone
08:37tests. You can see on the graph after loop 9 the S21 throttles whereas both
08:42ROG phones give us much better sustained performance particularly when you've got
08:46the Aeroactive cooler where we see the highest 89.7% stability. It's so
08:51interesting because the S21 Ultra I'm testing has the exact same Snapdragon
08:55888 chip but just look at that drop in performance by loop 12 which is the
09:00purple line between the two phones. The ROG particularly with the fan maintains
09:04a much higher frame rate for longer. So that's 3DMark but if we test the phones
09:09in Armor Mobile Ops which is quite a demanding game and also supports high
09:13refresh rates, while we do see the occasional drop to 0 on both during load
09:17screens you can see there's far fewer drops in frame rate on the ROG. It's a
09:21much more stable frame rate 98 versus 93% and also because it's a 144 Hertz
09:26screen we're actually seeing a slightly higher 126 median FPS. So obviously only
09:32a handful of games support higher 120 Hertz refresh rates and even fewer 144
09:36to fully take advantage of this screen but it's likely more will in the future
09:40particularly eSports titles and on the other end of the spectrum 60 FPS games
09:45with ridiculously demanding graphics like the new Genshin Impact also shows
09:49off the ROG's ability. And of course with this 6,000 million power battery I
09:54don't feel like I had to ration how much I played when I was away from the
09:57charger. In fact two hours of Call of Duty with maxed out settings at 50%
10:01brightness used 28% of the battery so in real world you can expect up to six
10:06hours of intensive gaming on this. All that's missing really is wireless
10:10charging which is a bit of a shame. Now if you are wondering what accessories
10:14work with the ROG Phone 5 it's a bit complicated. We have lost some
10:19support for older ones like the mobile desktop dock and also the Twinview Dock 3.
10:23I could see myself using the Kunai 3 gamepad from time to time but I
10:27think for me the only essential one is the Aeroactive Cooler 5. So you bring all
10:32that together, the sustained performance, the air triggers, the active cooler, the
10:36super fast and responsive screen, it all adds up to make this an incredible
10:40gaming phone. Although I am keen to test this versus the upcoming Red Magic
10:44gaming phone as well so make sure you have subscribed so you don't miss that.
10:48My only complaint really with this is the camera. It's fine, it's usable but
10:53it's not the best. But what do you reckon? Would you be tempted to buy one of these?
10:56And also if you are into your mobile gaming what are you playing in the
11:00moment? Let me know in the description below and also if you've got any other
11:03questions about this at all I read all your comments do let me know and I'll do
11:07my best to answer them. If you do want to see more from me then tap that subscribe
11:10button and ding that bell and I'll catch you next time right here on The Tech Chat.