On Monday at the Snapdragon Summit in Maui, Qualcomm unveiled its new flagship mobile SoC – the Snapdragon 8 Elite – which is powered by the company’s 2nd generation Oryon CPU cores. Qualcomm flew Ny Breaking to Maui to check out the latest chips, and I managed to spot some surprises that will soon delight mobile gamers.
During the keynote, Xiaomi announced that this is the case 15 series flagship would be the first phone to ship with the Snapdragon 8 Elite later this month. Honor then revealed that the Magic7 series handsets would also feature Qualcomm’s new mobile chip and would be launched on October 30.
ASUS followed suit with the ROG Phone 9a gaming flagship that will be released on November 19 and also includes Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. But unlike the competition, ASUS representatives were there with their new handset and I got to check it out at the event. While the company wasn’t willing to share specs or pricing, I was able to use the new ROG Phone 9 for a few minutes. So here are my quick first impressions.
The ROG Phone 9 looks a lot like the ROG Phone 8
The ROG Phone 9 has the same industrial design as the ROG Phone 8 Pro ($1,199) that our own Jon Mundy reviewed in January – right down to the shape of the camera pod and port/button placement. The dimensions are also similar, but this new phone feels lighter than its predecessor. You’ll find a pair of red accents on the rear, alongside a redesigned dot-matrix LED display – which is now positioned horizontally when you hold the handset in portrait orientation.
The big news under the hood is of course Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite. ASUS told me that the rest of the ROG Phone 9’s specs should be slightly improved over its predecessor, so I don’t expect too many surprises here. To refresh your memory, the ROG Phone 8 series features a 6.78-inch 1080p 165Hz AMOLED display with a peak brightness of 2,500 nits and an under-display fingerprint sensor. It has an IP68 rating for water and dust resistance.
The ROG Phone 9 should also inherit the shooters from the ROG Phone 8 series, including a 50 MP f/1.9 main sensor with PDAF and gimbal OIS, and 32 MP f/2.4 3x telephoto with PDAF and OIS, and a 13 MP f /2.2 120-degree ultra-wide. A 32 MP f/2.5 selfie camera rounds things out on the front. In terms of battery power, the ROG Phone 8 series comes with a 5,500mAh dual-cell battery and 65W wired charging plus 15W wireless charging.
You also get stereo speakers, a 3.5mm headphone jack and dual USB Type-C ports (one along the bottom and another on the left). This allows you to charge the phone while holding it in landscape orientation, without the cable getting in the way. In terms of memory, the ROG Phone 8 series offers 12GB, 16GB or 24GB of LPDDR5x RAM and 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage. There is no expandable storage.
Prediction of my ROG Phone 9’s specs: a little more
I think the above ROG Phone 8 Pro specs will carry over to the ROG Phone 9 largely unchanged – especially the cameras, which look identical. A better ultra-wide shooter (with AF) would be nice, but that’s a gamble considering this is a gaming handset. At least the AMOLED screen could be upgraded to a brighter panel, and the dual-cell battery could get a bump to 6000mAh, but that’s basically it.
Overall, I really liked what I saw during my short time with the ASUS ROG Phone 9. This gaming phone feels great in the hand, is evenly balanced and is well made – just like its predecessor. But it also seems more refined than the ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro. And while I didn’t get a chance to play games, navigating the user interface was smooth as butter and the AMOLED screen was super bright, even under the intense Hawaiian sunlight.
Qualcomm claims the Snapdragon 8 Elite improves gaming performance by up to 40% while delivering better temperature and battery life. So with a speedy new chip under the hood, equal or better specs than its predecessor, and a similar design, the ROG Phone 9 is shaping up to be quite the gaming powerhouse when it arrives on November 19. Stay tuned for final specs and pricing, and expect a full review once we’ve had a chance to test and run this phone through Future Labs.