ASUS' ROG Phone 6 Has More RAM Than An Xbox Series X
Taiwanese smartphone major ASUS has had a fair amount of success with its lineup of ROG-branded gaming-oriented smartphones. Ever since the first ROG smartphone appeared on the market in 2018, the company has consistently upgraded the lineup with newer models almost every year. The last ROG-branded smartphone from the company was the ASUS ROG Phone 5, which the company launched a little over a year ago — in March 2021.
The ROG Phone 5 was the fourth iteration of the ROG phone series as ASUS purposely skipped the ROG Phone 4 moniker. As is occasionally the case with companies doing major business with or in Asian countries, the number "4" is considered unlucky enough to skip in smartphone monikers altogether.
A few months after announcing the original ROG Phone 5 — in August 2021 – Asus gave the device a mid-life upgrade and launched two new variants: the ROG Phone 5s and the ROG Phone 5s Pro. Almost a year later, ASUS has rejigged the ROG Phone lineup with the announcement of the ROG Phone 6 lineup. The lineup includes two devices: a vanilla ROG Phone 6, and a top-end variant called the ROG Phone 6 Pro.
ASUS ROG Phone 6 Pro: The no compromise gaming phone
One look at the spec sheet page for the ROG Phone 6 Pro and it becomes amply evident that this phone is designed to cater to the ultimate spec hounds. Powered by the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip, the ROG Phone 6 Pro also ships with a colossal 18GB of LPDDR5 RAM. On paper, this phone has even more RAM available than an Xbox Series X (16GB GDDR6 RAM). However, do note that these two memory types are quite different from each other and this isn't exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, but still — this amount of RAM seems like a fair bit of overkill. The ROG Phone 6 Pro also ships with an impressive 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage with no provision of memory expansion using microSD cards.
The ROG Phone 6 Pro features a massive 6.78-inch, 164Hz, AMOLED display with a resolution of 2448 x 108 pixels. This panel also supports a touch sampling rate of 720Hz. For durability, the display on the ROG Phone 6 Pro also gets Corning Gorilla Glass Victus. The back of this monster also has a programmable array of LED lights which do not appear on the non-Pro edition.
Imaging on the ROG Phone 6 Pro is taken care of by a 50MP primary camera, a 13MP ultrawide camera, and a 5MP macro camera. The front-facing camera gets a 12MP sensor. Running out of battery life should not be a concern thanks to the 6000 mAh battery that supports Quick Charge 5.0 and PD Charging. The ROG 6 Phone Pro has been priced at EUR 1299 (right around $1320) in Europe.
AUS ROG Phone 6: The saner option?
The ASUS ROG Phone 6 is identical to its "Pro" cousin in most ways. Both the devices are the same size and feature the same display and camera sensors. The chipset used and the triple rear-facing cameras are the same too. In fact, this time around, the differences between the vanilla ROG Phone and the higher tier "Pro" variants have come down to slight changes to the design and the availability of larger capacity memory (RAM and internal media storage).
Unlike the ROG Phone 6 Pro which ships with 18GB of LPDDR5 RAM, the ROG Phone 6 is offered in several storage/RAM variants. The non-Pro version has a base 8GB+256GB option as well as a 12GB+256GB variant. There is a third variant of the ROG Phone 6 that offers 512GB of storage and ships with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM.
Both the devices continue to offer a wide array of optional accessories aimed to jack up the overall cool factor of the phone. The most popular among them — the AeroActive passive cooler — has a new design for the ROG Phone 6 series. Pricing for the ROG Phone 6 start at EUR 999 ($1022). While the ASUS ROG Phone 6 and Pro are slated to go on sale in the European and Asian markets soon, ASUS has yet to reveal availability and pricing details for North America.