I'd like to boast to you all that I can run at the pace of the world's best marathon runners. However, in the metaphorical "small print", I'll add that I'm talking about the first 100 meters of the distance.
The boasts about the performance of most flagship smartphones look similar. Sure, they launch the most demanding games with a frame rate per second that I didn't even have per hour on my computer as a child, but after a few minutes, the magic is gone. What kind of warrior can only land one strong blow with an axe in battle?
Many phones have cooling problems
Unfortunately, phones are small, and since they lack active cooling, they heat up quite quickly. And so that we perceive this heating as "funny warmth under our fingers", and not "funny burn scars and plastic melted into our hand", they then limit their power to bring down the temperature a bit.
Not everyone tests their smartphone in advanced games – most of the most popular titles from the Play Store could be launched even on a smartwatch if it only had the right screen. However, there is a small group for whom every pixel and every millisecond counts – the Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate was created for them.
Is it worth buying the ROG Phone 7?
The ROG Phone 7 is a smartphone for gamers. But seriously – every element even slightly important in gameplay has been refined to the smallest detail, and every unnecessary one has been treated neglectfully. Probably to slightly reduce the already absurd price of this marvel, set at 6799 PLN.
What do you get for this price? Well, first and foremost, a body that would certainly be difficult to hide on the battlefield – but easy to hit someone with. With a 6.8-inch display and weighing almost a quarter of a kilogram, the ROG is a true giant! Additionally, a picture of its back should be on Wikipedia for the article describing the term "gaming". Striking, decorated with elements in a few different colors and not entirely sensible inscriptions – not everyone will like them, but everyone will definitely have an opinion about them.
On top of that, there's an additional color display, used for... uh... fitting in even better with the definition of gaming style? Various animations appear on the screen depending on the context. When the main panel of the smartphone is on, when someone calls, when you receive a message, and so on. The best part is that you can prepare such animations yourself. So, if you've dreamt of a drakkar constantly sailing across the back of your smartphone – to the delight of the crowd – here it's possible.
There's only one thing that bothers me about the ROG Phone's styling – its predecessor from last year looked almost identical! It's one thing when the successor to a boring black t-shirt is another boring black t-shirt, and it's another when a fancy t-shirt with a panda eating sushi against a sunset is replaced by exactly the same one. With such an unusual appearance, it's simply not fitting.
Technical Specifications of the Asus ROG Phone 7 Ultimate
Back to it! The screen is an excellent AMOLED with a 165 Hz refresh rate, the speakers are undeniably the best on the entire smartphone market, and probably the only ones that would survive a 10-minute listening test by an audiophile. That is, the audiophile would survive, because with any other buzzing from the phone, they would die. On the outside, we also have a mini-jack connector, because a discerning gamer doesn't like the delays resulting from wireless audio transmission (or maybe a bad dancer gets in the way...) and as many as two USB C ports for lightning-fast charging from 0 to 100% in 40 minutes. Why two? Because demanding games are mostly console and PC games, and when I last checked, THANK GOODNESS, TVs still showed images in landscape, not portrait format. And playing with the smartphone positioned sideways and charging it with a cable sticking out of the shorter edge is not very comfortable – hence the additional port on the longer one as well.
Besides, playing on phones is generally not the most comfortable. Mobile games became so popular simply because we carry smartphones everywhere, but a flat body without physical buttons, and with a million notifications coming in every minute, is far from optimal gaming form. However, the creators of the ROG Phone meticulously carved through the mountain... the mountain of problems, and managed to prepare something surprisingly functional.
On the right side frame, there are touch triggers. You can assign pressing or sliding them to any place on the touchscreen, so instead of, for example, poking a large "FIRE" button on the screen (obscuring your view in the process), you simply tap them. This gives you a huge advantage in multiplayer games – my brother-in-law has become a true master of mobile Call of Duty and an idol of local adepts, who are about three times younger than him on average 😉
A special gaming assistant allows you to block incoming notifications, record gameplay, or adjust performance settings for each title separately. Because sometimes you probably care about longer battery life, and at other times about maximum performance.
Performance of the new Asus
That's right! Performance! It's powered by Qualcomm's most powerful processor, a whopping 16 GB of RAM, and, as I already mentioned, excellent cooling. I don't care exactly how it works, but based on the results, I'm willing to believe that some cold Ragnarok is taking place inside this phone. And as if that weren't enough, an optional fan is also available (it lights up!!) with four additional control buttons. You plug it into the extra USB C port, and a drop in power will never threaten you again.
See also: Ranking of processors in smartphones
The ROG Phone also offers a huge 6000 mAh battery, plenty of internal storage, and THE WORST CAMERA IN A PHONE FOR 6800 PLN ON THE MARKET. 🙁 This is another statuette for its collection, after those for the speakers and smooth operation. Congratulations! Photos from it don't look bad, but they are far from those from the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, or even the iPhone 14.
ASUS has once again proven that each of us can become whoever we want – even a smartphone can become professional gaming equipment. It's a totally niche gadget, but I wanted to tell you about something other than another phone focusing on cameras and "unique design". Yes, I know, it sounds terrible and I can't identify the language used in this slogan, but that's what most manufacturers serve us. Alright! We've dreamt, we've cheered ourselves up, and now let's get back to playing on our ordinary phones, which are a million times worse for gaming.
Or perhaps you're interested in what Mobile Vikings has to offer?
