Asus ROG Phone 3 Unleashed: Snapdragon 865+, 144Hz AMOLED Screen, 6,000mAh Battery

The Asus ROG Phone 3 is here, and as expected, it’s one powerful gaming smartphone. At a glance, it doesn’t look remarkably different from its predecessor, but there are some big changes under the hood, including a faster processor, a display with a higher refresh rate, and even a redesigned chassis.

Powering the ROG Phone 3 is none other than the recently announced Qualcomm Snapdragon 865+ chipset. Compared to the regular Snapdragon 865, the new SoC promises up to 10% increase in CPU and GPU performances; both of the components are overclocked to achieve this.

That being said, not all variants of the gaming smartphone will feature the new processor: the ROG Phone 3 Strix Edition is equipped with a standard Snapdragon 865 chip instead. The Strix Edition is meant to serve as a more affordable alternative, with only the processor, RAM, and storage capacities being different from the full-fledged ROG Phone 3.

Anyway, regardless of which variant you go for, this gaming smartphone comes with a 6.59-inch 2340 x 1080 AMOLED display with a very high 144Hz refresh rate. While the ROG Phone 3 is not the first smartphone to pack such a fast screen – that title goes to the Nubia RedMagic 5G – it’s still quite a unique feature. To top it off, the display sports a fast 270Hz touch sampling rate as well.

Design wise, the ROG Phone 3 looks and feels more refined now; it’s more “smartphone-like” than its predecessor. Compared to the previous model, the new phone feels better in the hands, thanks to the redesigned rear panel. Unlike the textured back of the ROG Phone II, the ROG Phone 3’s rear panel is just a single piece of glass now, just like a regular smartphone.

The camera configuration of the ROG Phone 3 is upgraded accordingly as well. It now features a triple camera system made up of a 64MP f/1.8 primary sensor, a 13MP f/2.4 ultra-wide angle lens, and a 5MP f/2.0 macro shooter. Unfortunately, it still doesn’t have a telephoto camera.

Other specifications of the ROG Phone 3 include two ultrasonic shoulder buttons, a 24MP f/2.0 selfie camera, a huge 6,000mAh battery with 30W fast charging, as well as an in-screen fingerprint sensor.

The Asus ROG Phone 3 will be arriving in Malaysia in the middle of September. Three variants will be brought in, including the Strix Edition with a standard Snapdragon 865 chipset, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. The other two models, on the other hand, feature a Snapdragon 865+ SoC and 512GB of storage, with only the RAM capacity – either 12GB or 16GB of RAM – differentiating the two variants.

Local pricing of the ROG Phone 3 has been revealed yet, though Asus Malaysia says that it will be priced closely to the ROG Phone II. To put this into context, the latter retailed from RM2,499 to RM4,499 here.