The Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro is positioned as a gaming smartphone with mainstream appeal, featuring a more conventional design and everyday usability while still maintaining powerful gaming capabilities. With features like AirTriggers, X Mode, and a 165Hz refresh rate display, it offers a high-performance gaming experience. The phone also boasts a 5,500mAh battery, fast charging, and a comprehensive camera system. Priced at $1,199, it competes with flagship phones and targets both casual gamers and professionals, although hardcore gaming enthusiasts may find it less specialized than previous ROG Phone models.
The Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro offers a revamped design, powerful specs, and decent photos, but its AI features are subtle compared to rivals, it has a smaller battery, and a short update timeline. The phone features a restrained matte black look, a punch-hole front-facing camera, and a mini-LED display on the back. It includes a headphone jack, two USB-C ports, and an animating mini-LED display. The phone's AI features are subtle, and it has a 6.78-inch display with a 165Hz refresh rate and a 720Hz touch sampling rate. The phone's cameras capture good photos, and it runs on Android 14 with a short update timeline. Overall, it's a high-spec gaming phone with a sleek design, but non-gaming users may want to wait for other options with broader photography support and longer software update timelines.
The era of dedicated gaming smartphones appears to be over, as the Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro marks a shift towards creating a high-performance phone that is also suitable for everyday use. Other gaming smartphone brands like Black Shark, Lenovo, Xiaomi, and Nubia have either ceased production or shifted focus to gaming accessories and other products. The decline in demand for dedicated gaming smartphones may be attributed to the rise of powerful flagship phones, handheld gaming consoles, and a preference for playing PC or console games on the go. While the traditional gaming smartphone may be dead, there is now a variety of handheld gaming consoles, everyday phones catering to mobile gamers, and mainstream flagship phones suitable for casual gaming.
Renders and specs of the Asus ROG Phone 8 and 8 Pro have leaked, confirming their powerful features. The phones will be officially launched on January 8 at CES and boast a modern design with a hole-punch camera on the front. Both devices feature a 6.78-inch AMOLED display with a 165Hz refresh rate, Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, up to 24GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage. The camera system includes a 50MP primary camera, 13MP ultrawide camera, and 32MP telephoto camera. Other features include Android 14 with ROG UI, IP68 rating, headphone jack, and a 5,500mAh battery with Quick Charge 5.0 support.
