The ASUS ROG Phone is the quintessential gaming phone. It has the most powerful chipset in an Android phone, shoulder buttons, an uninterrupted screen, an active cooling accessory and RGB lighting. The ROG logo that lights up on the back hasn’t changed in the 3 generations of ROG phones that ASUS launched, but it looks like the Taiwanese brand will shake things up with the next phone in the series: the ROG 5 phone. (We don’t know exactly what it will look like. called, but there is a chance ASUS will refrain from marketing it as ROG Phone 4, given the popularity of tetrafobia superstition in East Asian countries.)
Earlier this month, ASUS posted a teaser on its Weibo page that suggested the next release of the ROG Phone. Given the ROG Phone 3 launched in July 2020, the launch of the ROG Phone 5 appears to be happening a little bit earlier than expected. Many devices are being released earlier than usual this year, so this is not very surprising. Shortly after ASUS tried the ROG Phone 5, a photo and then a short practical video of the alleged device were posted on Weibo. The leaked image and video gave us a first look at the phone’s tiny secondary display on the back. This small screen appears to support game alerts and notifications for incoming calls.
Now, a listing published on the Chinese certification site TENAA shows us the ROG Phone 5 in greater detail. On the back, we can see the number “05” (which suggests that it is really the ROG Phone “5”), “REPUBLIC OF GAMERS”, “EST. 2006 ”(the year the brand was founded) and“ TENCENT GAMES ”. ASUS usually offers a customized version of its ROG smartphones in China in collaboration with Tencent Games, so we are probably looking at the Tencent version of the device here. The Tencent model typically commits to some internal hardware components in order to cut costs, but the overall design must be similar to the international model.
We can also see on the back that the area at the bottom left is a dot matrix used for the phone’s Aura Lighting feature. The image on the back sent to TENAA shows the ROG logo on, but the lighting can probably be customized in the phone’s software. The matrix design on the back of the ROG Phone 5 reminds me of the Lightning Armor case that ASUS offers for the ROG Phone 3.
In addition to the changes mentioned in the rear design, we don’t see many other changes in the design. The cameras look the same, the dual front speakers are still there, the selfie camera on the right is still there, the screen still doesn’t seem to have any notches or holes and the doors still seem to be in the same place. The SIM card tray cover is a beautiful red color, but we are not sure if this is a Tencent exclusive design change.
Not much is known about the ROG Phone 5. According to the rest of the certification list (H / T @_the_tech_guy), the device will have a 6.78 inch OLED display, a two cell battery design (2 3000mAh batteries), will run Android 11 and will measure 172.834 x 77.252 x 10.29 mm in dimensions. A previous certification list revealed that the device supports 65W wired fast charging. We hope it has Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888, ample RAM and storage and other top-notch hardware.
The ROG Phone 3 was our favorite gaming phone in 2020. With competition from new players in the field like Lenovo and soon Redmi, the ROG Phone 5 will need to debut with exclusive gaming features that will justify its likely high price.