ASUS had just launched one of the most exciting smartphone series of the year – ROG Phone 5 series – during a high profile live-streamed event. Unlike last year’s ROG Phone 3 (Review), the new ROG Phone 5 series is available in a variety of models including the vanilla ROG Phone 5, ROG Phone 5 Pro, as well as ROG Phone 5 Ultimate.
On the outside, all three models share largely the same design except for some minor differences on their rear design. For the ROG Phone 5 Pro, it features a color PM-OLED display dubbed as ROG Vision. Although the ROG Phone 5 Ultimate also features ROG Vision on its back panel, but it settles for a monochrome PM-OLED instead of a colored one. As for the vanilla ROG Phone 5, it boasts a dot-matrix RGB backlit for the ROG logo much like last year’s ROG Phone 3.
In terms of internals, all three models are powered by the latest flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset. However, they differ mainly by the memory configurations they are offered in. For your convenience, here’s a summary of the memory configurations available for each model (do note that all models feature UFS 3.1 flash storage unless otherwise stated):
ROG Phone 5
- 8GB+128GB (No UFS 3.1) – €799
- 12GB+256GB – €899
- 16GB+512GB – €999
ROG Phone 5 Pro (Bundled with AeroActive Cooler 5)
- 16GB+512GB – €1,199
ROG Phone 5 Ultimate (Bundled with AeroActive Cooler 5)
- 18GB+512GB – €1,299
Coming to the front display, the ROG Phone 5 series devices boast a huge 6.78-inches display which offers a FHD+ screen resolution, as well as a buttery smooth 144Hz screen refresh rate and a responsive 300Hz touch sampling rate. On top of that, its also HDR10+ certified and has up to 800 nits peak brightness to ensure the screen is always visible regardless of the amount of ambient light.
On the imaging front, the ROG Phone 5 series smartphones rely on a triple-camera system at the back 64 megapixels Sony IMX 686 primary shooter, 13 megapixels ultra-wide camera with 125-degrees FoV, as well as a 5 megapixels macro camera. Its camera department will be rounded out by a 20 megapixels front-facing camera for selfie and video-calling purposes.
As usual, the ROG Phone 5 series devices also brought in a range of gaming-centric features and audio enhancements to heighten its user’s experience. These include 10 different motion controls, ultrasonic sensors on the phone’s shoulder, dual front-facing stereo speakers optimized by Dirac, 3.5mm headphone jack with high-end codec, as well as support for AeroActive Cooler 5 and Kunai 3 gamepad.
Under the hood, the devices are backed by a massive 6,000mAh battery (3,000mAh dual-cell) which carries support for 65W fast-charging and Quick Charge 5.0. On the software-side, users can choose between the ROG UI or Zen UI (seen on the ASUS ZenFone series devices) based on the latest Android 11 OS.
