Rating： 4.5
I purchased the ASUS ROG Phone 6.
Gaming smartphones that heat up and cool down easily
The ROG Phone 6 is a smartphone powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.
The 8+ Gen 1, which uses the TSMC 4nm process, can maintain higher performance than the 8 Gen 1 while reducing power consumption, and the SoC is placed in the center to make it difficult for heat to reach the hands.
The device seems to have been developed on the premise that an external cooler can be attached, so performance degradation is less likely to occur when heat is generated, and the device itself has high cooling performance, so it will cool down quickly if there is no load on it.
It supports a refresh rate of 165 Hz, which is the highest class for smartphones, and the touch sampling rate is 720 Hz for fast touch response.
This review is done on the CN-32.2810.2205.63, 12GB+256GB version.
- Unparalleled high performance & power saving 8+ Gen 1
- Loose thermal throttling for easy performance
- 165Hz refresh rate support
- 720Hz touch sampling rate
- Vivid Samsung AMOLED
- Front stereo speakers
- 6000mAh battery with bypass charging support
- Earphone jack available
- IPX4 life waterproof
- Heavy
- Tendency to get hot due to external cooler premise
- Narrow viewing angle
- Fingerprint authentication is not highly accurate
- Downgraded to not equipped with Hi-Fi DAC
| ROG Phone 6 AI2201 | |
|---|---|
| OS | Android 12 |
| RAM | 8GB/12GB LPDDR5 |
| Storage | 128GB / 256GB UFS 3.1 |
| SoC | Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 |
| Display | 6.78inch FHD+ 165Hz AMOLED |
| Size | 173mm × 77mm × 10.4mm |
| Weight | 239g |
| SIM | nano SIM + nano SIM |
| Rear Camera | 50MP (Sony IMX766) + 13MP (Ultra-wide OmniVision ov13b) + 5MP (Macro OmniVision ov8856?) |
| Front Camera | 12MP (Sony IMX663) |
| Battery | 6000mAh |
| USB Port | USB Type-C x2 |
| Bands | 5G SA: N1/N3/N5/N8/N28, SA & NSA: N41/N77/N78/N79 FDD-LTE: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8,18,19,26, 28 TD-LTE: 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 48 CDMA: BC0 WCDMA: 800 (19) / 900(8) / 850(5/6) / 1700(4) / 1900(2) / 2100(1) EDGE/GPRS/GSM 850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz |
Index
- 1 Gaming smartphones that heat up and cool down easily
- 2 Low touch latency for any game
- 3 Accuracy of fingerprint recognition is at the level of a decade ago
- 4 Glowing back panel
- 5 SONY IMX766 triple camera
- 6 Earphone jack and two USB Type-C ports
- 7 VoLTE can be easily activated
- 8 Equipped with rare front stereo speakers
- 9 Extensive gesture controls such as AirTrigger and rear tap
- 10 Game mode allows performance adjustment and bypass charging
- 11 Loose thermal control and easy performance
- 12 Bootloader Unlockable
- 13 Conclusion
Accessories include a hard-type protective case, 65W charger, USB Type-C cable, and instructions.
The card marked “ゲーマー” (“Gamer” in Japanese) is an AR card and can be scanned with the built-in app.
Low touch latency for any game
The ROG Phone 6 has a 6.78″ FHD+ resolution AMOLED display.
By daring to leave a bezel to accommodate the in-camera, the phone has a full screen without a notch or punch hole.
This is reasonable, as bezel-less on a gaming phone increases the possibility of accidentally touching the edges.
It is made by Samsung and has diamond array.
It supports refresh rates as high as 165 Hz, and you can choose from 60, 90, 120, 144, and 165 Hz to match your preference and battery consumption.
The touch sampling rate is 720 Hz, and any application can be run at 720 Hz in game mode, described below.
Touch latency measured with the WALT Latency Timer was 5.7ms from touch to kernel, 6.1ms from kernel to Java, and 14.9ms for screen rendering, for a total of 26.7ms.
This is a level of low touch latency on par with the Black Shark 4 Pro, which has the same 720Hz touch sampling rate.
Widevine L1 allows streaming in HD quality on Amazon Prime Video (beta) and others.
Accuracy of fingerprint recognition is at the level of a decade ago
The ROG Phone 6 has an in-screen fingerprint sensor.
I understand that this is a gaming smartphone and not much effort has been put into it, but the accuracy is low and often fails.
It’s a shame, because recent smartphones with in-screen fingerprint recognition are much faster and more accurate, even mid-range models.
It would be better to use it in conjunction with face recognition.
Glowing back panel
The back of the ROG Phone 6 shines like a gaming smartphone.
Since it is a collaboration with Tencent Games in China, there is a Tencent Games logo on the back.
The LEDs are a waste of power since they are not seen during play, but they are easy to see when the display is on the bottom side and a notification comes in.
It weighs in at a hefty 243.2g.
However, the battery has a high capacity of 6000mAh, so it is understandable that it weighs this much.
SONY IMX766 triple camera
The ROG Phone 6 is a triple camera with a 50MP SONY IMX766 camera as the main camera.
It is a gaming phone, but still takes beautiful pictures there.
The 13MP super wide angle and 5MP macro are almost useless, and I wish ASUS could have been cut to lower the cost.
Earphone jack and two USB Type-C ports
The ROG Phone 6 has a 3.5mm earphone jack and USB Type-C port on the bottom.
Measuring the audio output latency of the earphone jack with the WALT Latency Timer, it was 37 ms.
The latency is large, probably due to the presence of Dirac effects.
The ROG Phone 5s series was equipped with the Hi-Fi DAC ESS 9280AC Pro, but the ROG Phone 6 / ROG Phone 6 Pro is not equipped with it, perhaps due to a lack of semiconductors or cooling space.
For high sound quality, it is better to use a DAC such as FiiO BTR7.
Although it is unfortunate that the sound quality may be inferior to that of the 5s series even though it has an earphone jack, it is not a fatal problem since external DACs are basically more powerful and have higher sound quality.
To my surprise, there is also a USB Type-C port on the side, which allows charging and attaching accessories without the cable getting in the way, even when the device is held horizontally.
In game mode, described below, bypass charging can be enabled, so power can be supplied without charging the battery, allowing play with less heat generation and load on the battery.
VoLTE can be easily activated
The ROG Phone 6 has VoLTE disabled by default.
VoLTE can be enabled by dialing *#*#3642623344#*#*#* in the phone app and turning the SIM on and off or unplugging it.
Equipped with rare front stereo speakers
There are no speaker holes at the top or bottom of the ROG Phone 6.
Yes, the ROG Phone 6 is a “front stereo speaker” with stereo speakers mounted on the display surface.
Unlike side stereo speakers, the sound was heard more toward the center of the room, and instead of sounding narrower than side stereo speakers in terms of sound spread, the sound was clearly louder.
Both bass and treble sounded beautifully, especially treble was clear and distinct.
Front stereo speakers are probably the best solution for a gaming phone because you don’t have to worry about blocking the speaker holes when you hold it horizontally.
It is equipped with Dirac’s Audio Wizard, which allows you to adjust the equalizer and more.
Extensive gesture controls such as AirTrigger and rear tap
ROG Phone 6 supports various gesture operations.
There is an AirTrigger on the side that allows you to assign tap and slide actions during a game.
It also supports gyroscopic aiming, which makes it easier to move the sight if the game supports it.
You can also trigger an action by holding it.
You can also set it to launch an application of your choice.
It also supports double-tapping on the back.
Although the response may be a little sluggish, screenshots, etc. can be easily executed without touching the screen or buttons.
Of course, it also supports common gesture controls such as double-tap to turn the screen on and flip it over to mute.
You can also use gestures for music control and writing text to launch apps.
Game mode allows performance adjustment and bypass charging
The ROG Phone 6 can be swiped diagonally from the upper left corner of the screen to bring up the GAME GENIE in the game app.
You can easily adjust the refresh rate, macro and record, as well as adjust performance.
One of the most convenient is “bypass charging”.
Since power can be supplied without charging the battery, charging while playing games does not put a load on the battery, and heat generated during charging is also suppressed to some extent.
It is nice to be able to play without worrying about battery level while minimizing the impact on battery life.
In addition to the performance mode called X mode, you can also customize it in detail by yourself.
This is an extraordinary customizability that allows you to change even the CPU governor, which normally cannot be changed without rooting the phone.
It is rare to find a smartphone that can be customized to this level.
It is suitable for experts, as it may have the opposite effect if you play around with it unnecessarily.
If you don’t need detailed adjustments, you can use game tuning to make a rough adjustment from Lv 1 to 3.
There is also an option to set the touch sampling rate to 720 Hz, so any game can benefit from the 720 Hz touch sampling rate.
Apart from the game mode, the system mode can also be changed from the battery settings.
You can change options like limiting background synchronization and adjusting slide sensitivity.
Loose thermal control and easy performance
The ROG Phone 6 has a loosely adjusted thermal throttling, which makes it easy to maintain high performance even when the temperature rises above 40°C.
Since heat generation increases with performance, it is better to have an external cooling cooler when you want to play for long periods of time.
The genuine Aeroactive Cooler is also sold, but it is a high-end product costing around $120, and it provides cooling that matches the temperature with anti-condensation measures.
The ROG Phone 6 itself has high heat dissipation performance, and when placed in a room with a room temperature of 29°C, the battery temperature quickly drops to 27°C or lower.
When a benchmark application is launched, X mode is enabled on its own.
Since UL Solutions, the provider of 3DMark and PCMark, prohibits changing the behavior between normal apps and benchmarks, this is another kind of benchmark boost, but it is still better because it is not hidden from the user and can be turned off manually.
From left to right, the scores are Geekbench disguised as Genshin, normal build, and X mode enabled.
It does not appear to be throttling by package name determination.
Even in the restricted state, the scores are equal to or better than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, and if you don’t like the increased heat, playing with X mode off should be sufficient.
Android smartphone Benchmark Charts; CPU, GPU, memory & storage performance, and touch latency – AndroPlus
AndroPlus
In the 3DMark Wild Life Stress Test with X mode off, the score was 10384, with a temperature increase from 28°C to 40°C (12°C increase) and 24-78 FPS.
Even when the score dropped due to heat generation, it still exceeded the Snapdragon 888’s score when it was at its best.
In PCMark Work 3.0, which measures performance in everyday use such as document operations, the score was 15218 with X mode off.
The score is in line with cheated Snapdragon 888 and 8 Gen 1 devices such as “benchmark boosted” and “completely disabled thermal throttling”.
LPDDR5 memory and UFS 3.1 storage, with particularly fast sequential writes.
Playing Genshin at the highest quality and 60FPS setting and measuring with WeTest PerfDog, the average power consumption was 112.38mW per FPS at 59.3FPS.
Although the power consumption is higher than the Xiaomi 12S Ultra‘s 82.5mW, the frame rate is excellent at almost 60FPS.
Battery temperature was a bit hot on the side frames with a maximum rise to about 42°C.
With an external cooler, it would be more comfortable to play at 60FPS for a longer period of time.
In World of Tanks Blitz, the average FPS was 116.3 FPS with X mode off when playing at 120 FPS settings and all graphics settings at their highest values.
With X mode on, the average was 119.7 FPS, almost 120 FPS sticking.
The power consumption is not too high, and it is great.
Bootloader Unlockable
APK for Bootloader Unlock request is distributed on the official website for ROG Phone 6.
After bootloader unlocking, you won’t be able to receive OTA, but since the firmware is also distributed, there seems to be no problem.
腾讯ROG游戏手机6
ROG Phone 6 | Gaming Phones｜ROG – Republic of Gamers｜ROG Global
How to convert ASUS ROG Phone 6 Chinese version to Global ROM – AndroPlus
AndroPlusConclusion
- Unparalleled high performance & power saving 8+ Gen 1
- Loose thermal throttling for easy performance
- 165Hz refresh rate support
- 720Hz touch sampling rate
- Vivid Samsung AMOLED
- Front stereo speakers
- 6000mAh battery with bypass charging support
- Earphone jack available
- IPX4 life waterproof
- Heavy
- Tendency to get hot due to external cooler premise
- Narrow viewing angle
- Fingerprint authentication is not highly accurate
- Downgraded to not equipped with Hi-Fi DAC
The ROG Phone 6 will continue to produce high performance for a long time, far exceeding the 8 Gen 1, thanks to the power-saving and efficient Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, high heat dissipation performance and loose thermal throttling.
An external cooler will further stabilize play for long periods of time, and even if it is overcooled and condensation forms between the cooler and the back, it should not be a cause of failure thanks to IPX4 waterproofing.
The 165Hz refresh rate makes scrolling in browsers as well as supported games smooth, and the 720Hz touch sampling rate reduces touch latency considerably.
The ROG Phone 6 is recommended for those who want a power-efficient and high-performance gaming smartphone.
Global version can be bought on Amazon.it.