The first-generation ROG gaming phone has been well received by handheld gaming enthusiasts for its strong hardware performance, multi-finger linked controls, and smooth operation. In addition to good heat dissipation, novelty, first-class feel, configuration and other comments, the most frequent in the user evaluation is "crush horizontal screen game pain point", ROG game phone for horizontal screen game made a lot of optimization is quite effective.
This time, ROG Gaming Phone 2 not only carries the latest Snapdragon 855 Plus platform, but also adopts a 120Hz refresh rate AMOLED gaming screen, which establishes the dominant position of ROG Gaming Phone. Unlike the previous generation, this time ROG Gaming Phone 2 has joined forces with Tencent Games to optimize many software aspects for the hardware of ROG Gaming Phone 2. Only the combination of hard and soft can create the strongest gaming experience. This review, we mainly on the ROG game phone 2 game experience to do a detailed review.
One, the appearance of the design analysis: no cost to create the strongest gaming peripherals
Careful users should have noticed that most of the phones on the market now, most of the flagship phone screen size multi-dimensional 6.4 inches. Many manufacturers coincidentally choose this size is not a coincidence, which is mainly limited by the cost of the panel. 6.4 inches is supposed to be in a number of size options, the cost is relatively low. The ROG Gaming Phone 2 has a screen size of 6.59 inches with a ratio of 19.5:9. This size is the optimal horizontal grip size based on ROG's official user data, and it has always been ROG's product philosophy to create the strongest gaming peripherals at any cost. This point, in the ROG gaming phone also shows very completely. It is especially worth mentioning that the ROG gaming phone 2 also adopts a 120Hz screen for the first time in the world.
Full-screen is now a major mainstream trend in smartphones, with a better front view. But users who have played games with full-screen phones must have found the pain point that when held horizontally, the palm of the hand will always block the speakers or microphone, which is very maddening in the game's fierce battle scene. Therefore, the use of front dual-speaker design has become a common **** knowledge of handheld game peripheral manufacturers. ROG Gaming Phone 2 continues the front dual-speaker design of its predecessor, and the number of noise-canceling microphones has been increased to four, respectively, with the body of the body is not easy to be covered by the location of the voice more clearly, the game in the communication is more smooth.
The location of the front camera is also quite special, located on the right side of the top of the body. This design allows players to have a better angle of the screen when gaming live.
The design of the back of the device is, to summarize, "powerful and elegant". As we all know, the appearance of gaming products are generally more open, tough, mostly straight up and down design, very sense of line, ROG Gaming Phone 2 is the same, the back of the body has a lot of straight line elements. However, in the peripheral area of the fuselage, a certain curvature design has been added to optimize the gripping feel.
The ROG logo on the back is sputtered, and the synchronized AURA RGB lighting works in tandem with gaming scenarios to make triple or quintuple kills even more impressive.
This is the heat sink on the back of the ROG Gaming Phone 2, and the exposed metal material shows the strong gaming attributes.
The "REPUBLIC OF GAMERS" is the belief of many gamers.
ROG Gaming Phone 2 has a very large number of expansion peripherals, including: Cooler Fan 2, Dual Screen Expansion Box 2, Dual-Control Grip, Desktop Gaming Dock, and more. The photo above shows the sockets that the ROG Gaming Phone 2 uses to connect the expansion peripherals.
This is the ROG Gaming Phone 2 after installing the Cooler Fan 2, which is very cool, and the ROG Faith Light on the back can also be linked with the gaming status. The Cooler Fan 2 directs airflow to the ROG Gaming Phone 2's hotspots to lower the body temperature. Meanwhile, the bottom of the Cooler Fan 2 also extends a USB Type-C port and a 3.5mm headphone jack to avoid the charging cable and headphone cable ports from affecting the hand posture when gripping horizontally.
The "REPUBLIC OF GAMERS" logo on the front of the Cooler Fan 2 is also illuminated, allowing it to be linked to systems and games.
This is a customized Aero case for the ROG Gaming Phone 2, which wraps around the edges of the body. And the large hollowed-out design avoids the ROG AURA Divine Light Synchronization effect from being blocked, which is cool and practical.
This time Tencent Games also launched an exclusive customized peripheral especially for ROG Gaming Phone 2: the Dazzling Light Smart Case. It conducts light from an LED, for example, in the camera position to the light-emitting area on the back of the body through an ingenious light guide design.
This case is also NFC-enabled, and once installed, it can be automatically guided to switch to the appropriate theme in the system.
That's it for the exterior, and as you can see, the ROG Gaming Phone 2 has been optimized for landscape gaming scenarios, effectively reducing landscape gaming pain points.
Second, the game test
① Snapdragon 855 Plus briefly
In June last year, the ROG gaming phone was born, which is equipped with the most advanced Snapdragon 845 processor at that time. But this 845 is not the ordinary 845, but ASUS to Qualcomm specially customized main frequency up to 2.96GHz "official super version" of the 845. but from Qualcomm's point of view, Qualcomm in the "official super version" of the 845 on the eccentricity, more or less hurt the other partners heart. Other partners' hearts.
According to the official data, Snapdragon 855 Plus, compared to the previous Snapdragon 855, the main frequency of the CPU part of the "super core" from 2.84GHz to 2.96GHz, and the main frequency of the GPU part of the "super core" from 2.84GHz to 2.96GHz, and the main frequency of the GPU part of the GPU part of the "super core" from 2.96GHz to 2.96GHz. GHz, the GPU part of the Adreno 640 main frequency from 585MHz to 672MHz, GPU performance increased by 15%. It can be assumed that the Snapdragon 855 Plus is a more purely dedicated processor for gaming.
②Snapdragon 855 Plus performance test: ROG gaming phone 2 dominates the list
So what kind of performance did this processor get when used on ROG gaming phone 2. Let's take a look at it through software testing.
In the latest AnTuTu performance charts, the Red Magic 3 tops the list with a score of 382,332. In both of my AnTuTu tests of the ROG Gaming Phone 2, the ROG Gaming Phone 2 scored over 390,000+, making it the new performance juggernaut. Not only that, some users' test results even exceeded 400,000, and if I remember correctly, a 400,000+ score is a first for an Android device.
3 flash memory performance test: 2 times more than the mainstream flagship
And ROG Gaming Phone 2 in the performance of the strong not only lies in the processor, it also adopts the fastest UFS 3.0 high-speed flash memory and LPDDR4X high-speed memory, none of them are the industry's top. In real life, the sequential read speed of ROG Gaming Phone 2 reaches 1550.93MB/s and the sequential write speed reaches 400.28MB/s. Most of the flagship phones on the market use UFS 2.1 flash memory, with read speeds of 700-800MB/s. The read and write performance of the ROG Gaming Phone 2 doubles compared to that of most flagships on the market, and in the many fierce battles in the game, the ROG Gaming Phone 2 can be used to play a lot of games, but also to play a lot of games. boost, and the high read/write speeds allow for faster screen loading and smoother gameplay during the game's many intense battle scenarios.
④Peace Elite game test: 60 frames stable full run
Next is the game test, first with the current hot chicken hand game "Peace Elite" to test.
In "Peaceful Elite" will be set to HD and extreme frame rate, in this mode, "Peaceful Elite" game frame rate can reach up to 60 frames. Previously, I typically played the game on a Snapdragon 730 processor phone, which is limited to a maximum frame rate of 40 fps and doesn't support the 60 fps extreme frame rate. When the 60 fps is turned on, the smoothness of the screen brings a noticeable improvement in the experience, and the screen is extremely smooth. The screen refresh rate of the ROG Gaming Phone 2 is 120Hz, so it's hard to imagine what it would be like to experience 120 frames per second, but we'll test it later and finish this piece first.
KFMark recorded the game data with KFMark, and KFMark gave it an "incredibly smooth" rating. The ROG Gaming Phone 2 averaged 59 fps in a game of Elite Peace at up to 60 fps. The large fluctuation in the frame rate is caused by being killed in the game and switching to spectator mode, which is a normal phenomenon in the game. Therefore, it can be assumed that the ROG Gaming Phone 2 is running at full fps in the game Peaceful Elite.
On controls, ROG Gaming Phone 2 inherits the dual shoulder keys design of its predecessor and realizes four-finger linkage in the game. Under the gaming interface, swipe inward from the left side of the screen to call out the Game Genie to open the AirTriggers button. However, the AirTriggers of the previous generation needed to be lifted and then pressed, which was not really convenient. This time AirTriggers has been upgraded compared to the previous generation, and it supports stick-finger tapping. In other words, the finger can be pressed continuously without leaving the touch area, which reduces the amplitude of finger operation and also provides vibration feedback. The continuous press trigger works well in design games, and the touch-activated physical buttons reduce the need to search for buttons on the screen, making the operation more direct and responsive. I'm used to setting the left shoulder button to shoot and the right shoulder button to open the camera. The four-finger linkage feels very smooth and responsive.
The control of the ROG Gaming Phone 2 is also based on the 240Hz touchscreen IC, which is the fastest touchscreen IC available, and the end-to-end touch latency of the ROG Gaming Phone 2 has been reduced to 49ms, a response time that can be ignored by the average gamer.
What's more, AirTriggers can be adjusted for the force of a press, and can act as a shortcut for certain actions through the grip operation. You can quickly turn on the flashlight, mute/vibrate the phone, take a screenshot, and turn on/off the X mode by using a long/short grip. One more button, more convenience.
Excellent temperature control is a guarantee for the phone to run smoothly and stably for a long time in gaming scenarios. 30 minutes later, we tested the temperature of the ROG Gaming Phone 2 with a thermal imager. the maximum temperature of the front of the ROG Gaming Phone 2 body was 40℃, and the maximum temperature of the back was 39.9℃, which is a pretty good temperature performance. It is understood that the ROG Gaming Phone 2 adopts a large area of 3D Vapor Chamber vacuum chamber even temperature plate with copper and aluminum heat conduction sheet, graphene heat conduction sheet, back panel heat dissipation Grid and other designs, multi-pronged, to ensure that overheating does not occur in a long period of time under the high-performance mode of downgrading.
Testing of intense battle scenarios
In Elite Peace, we simulated intense battle scenarios by constantly throwing grenades, Molotov cocktails, and smoke grenades into the field, a scenario that required a lot of GPU graphics rendering.
After about 5 minutes of testing, the ROG Gaming Phone 2's frame rate remained stable at the highest possible rate, averaging 59fps. This is critical to ensure that you don't drop out of the battlefield during intense combat scenarios. As you can see, the Snapdragon 855 Plus is able to maintain a steady performance output no matter what the situation is, and the game Peaceful Elite wasn't enough to squeeze all the performance out of the Snapdragon 855 Plus.
⑤ QQ Speed game test: 120 frames high frame rate / incredibly smooth
ROG gaming phone 2 screen refresh rate of 120Hz, which is the industry's first such high refresh rate screen. Tencent games, which cooperated with ROG, also provided a high-frame-rate mode for QQ Speed, and more and more Tencent handheld games will support the high-frame-rate mode next.
In the "QQ Speed" game, adjust the frame rate setting to ultra-high, high quality, and open the HD display. Because the KFMark I was using before didn't support 120 high frame rate monitoring, I was unable to record real-time frame rate data over time for the time being. However, during the game, I enabled the real-time information display through the Game Genie, and the hover window showed the real-time frame rate information. during the 2-minute game, the frame rate hovered around 100 fps, and there was rarely any significant frame drop in the collision and acceleration scenes. The smoothness of the entire game was much improved compared to the previous general scenarios. After playing for a while, and then adjusting the frame rate to a higher one, you can already feel a significant drop in smoothness, something you can't go back to once you've used the ultra-high frame rate.
The ROG Gaming Phone 2 supports a global 120Hz refresh rate, which can be adjusted in the system settings. 120Hz high refresh rate is also very smooth when swiping on Weibo, browsing news, and so on. I purposely used the iPhone X to compare the smoothness of brushing microblogging with the ROG Gaming Phone 2, and without comparing, and then returning to the iPhone X to brush microblogging, slightly faster swiping, you can already clearly feel the frame skipping.
This is a comparison of the smoothness of brushing microblogging with ROG Gaming Phone 2 and iPhone X in slow motion, and looking closely at the end of the slow motion, the iPhone X frame skipping is especially noticeable. Higher refresh rates are already a major trend, with two phones already supporting 90Hz refresh rates, while the 120Hz ROG Gaming Phone 2 is the first of its kind. It's an obvious improvement in smoothness.
Three, the camera: 48 megapixels rich in detail
ROG gaming phone 2 in the game performance is good enough, but as a cell phone, it can not be detached from the basic attributes of "cell phone", the camera's imaging quality is also an important measure of the quality of a cell phone products. The ROG gaming phone 2 adopts a 48-megapixel main camera + 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens dual-camera combination, in which the main camera is from Sony's IMX586 CMOS, the sensor is widely used in the 2019 flagship models, is the star CMOS this year.In this part, we use the ROG gaming phone 2 to take some photos, through the actual sample to see the imaging quality. Quality.
This photo was taken by the ROG Gaming Phone 2. The transition between dark and light is natural, the image is clear, and the edges of the font are sharp. The overall image quality is good.
But really, the first photo is just a very small portion taken from the image above. The photo was taken by the 48MP mode, and even after cropping, it has a good amount of detail. This means that after taking a photo with the ROG Gaming Phone 2, you still have a good view of the image without fear of post-cropping. You can do whatever you want by taking the photo first and processing it later.
Night Mode Comparison.ROG Gaming Phone 2 offers a Night Mode. The main principle of the night mode is multi-frame compositing and multi-frame noise reduction. By taking multiple photos in a short period of time, synthesizing them, and getting a photo with a better look and feel, it is especially useful in dark light or nighttime environments. Above are photos taken in extreme darkness with the default and night modes, and as you can see, the brightness and purity of the photos have been greatly improved and more details of the image have been retained.
Portrait samples, the background bokeh effect is obvious and natural, with no obvious smearing. The transition between different focal planes is natural, and the subject is well highlighted.
Macro samples in indoor dark light. The overall image brightness is maintained at a high level, and there is no obvious noise in the low-light environment, with a high degree of image purity. Enough to cope with the general environment of the photo shooting. Foreground bokeh is natural, and the focus image is clear and sharp.
The camera of ROG Gaming Phone 2 is enough to deal with common shooting scenes for general users, and the advantage of 48 million high pixel details is obvious, so there is no fear of post-cropping and various processing.
Four, battery life test: 6000mAh power to ensure sufficient battery life
For the game of this high power consumption scene, ROG game phone 2 is equipped with a 6000mAh high-capacity battery, such a large amount of battery application in the flagship cell phone for the first time. Even so, ROG Mobile Phone 2 still keeps the thickness of the body within the regular size range. We also tested the battery life of the ROG Gaming Phone 2 through 30 minutes of gameplay of Peaceful Elite, 30 minutes of online video, and 30 minutes of swiping Jitterbug. The screen was kept at maximum brightness the entire time. the 3 test items consumed 10%, 5% and 7% of power respectively.
As a comparison, the Red Magic 3 with a 5000mAh battery consumed 13% of the power during 30 minutes of gaming. Although compared to a regular 60Hz screen, a 120Hz screen can be considered a power hog. But thanks to the large 6000mAh battery, the ROG gaming phone 2 has a better battery life performance compared to the Snapdragon 855 flagships on the market, which is somewhat unexpected.
What I'd like to emphasize again is that the interface slides up and down as smoothly as silk during the process of swiping Jitterbug. This is the kind of smoothness that only a high 120Hz refresh rate can give, and once you've used it, you'll never go back. Of course, you can also manually set the refresh rate to 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz in the system to save more power.
V. Summary
What REPUBLIC OF GAMERS stands for is the benchmark of gaming peripherals, and it is a faith-based existence in the gaming circle. The hardware used in the released ROG Gaming Phone 2 is the highest specification, Snapdragon 855 Plus processor, 120Hz refresh rate screen, UFS 3.0 high-speed flash memory, etc., which is the hardware guarantee of smooth game. The 120Hz refresh rate screen is particularly impressive, not only in the game, but also in the basic experience of Android phones to a new level. High refresh rate screen is bound to become a new trend.
But the ROG Gaming Phone 2 is not a simple pile of material products, it understands the preferences of gamers. Many targeted optimizations have been made for gaming scenarios. The upgraded dual-shoulder key supports finger-pointing, and the four-finger linkage operation is smoother; the optimized dual-speaker, four-noise-canceling microphone sound effect is shocking and the voice is clear; and the cool lighting effect that can be linked with the game is also loved by the players. With the gaming gene, ROG Gaming Phone 2 is a benchmark product in gaming phones.