For a little while there a few years back, it seemed like gaming phones were on the verge of going mainstream, as several tier 1 brands (including Samsung) showed active interest in joining "specialized" companies such as Asus and Razer to help the relatively small niche grow and appeal to a wider and wider audience. The Asus ROG Phone 6 will be available in "regular" and Pro versions... at some point in the near future, arriving at least 15 months on the heels of the Snapdragon 888-powered ROG Phone 5 to set a new (Android) standard in terms of raw speed with Qualcomm's state-of-the-art Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor under the hood.
Lights, camera, action!
As always, the funky RGB lighting system on the back of the phone is by far the most notable design aspect, at least as far as the "standard" ROG Phone 6 is concerned. The ROG Phone 6 Pro, meanwhile, mainly stands out from its slightly humbler brother with a little 2-inch OLED panel on its rear cover that uses a one-of-a-kind technology called ROG Vision to display various eye-catching animations. Although not incredibly useful from a pragmatic perspective, this secondary display will definitely help set the Asus ROG Phone 6 Pro apart from all the other best gaming phones out there in terms of aesthetics and even customization, allowing users to create their very own personal animations.
The devil is in the details
There's obviously a good reason why the cameras are not on par with what Samsung's Galaxy S22 Ultra, for instance, offers in the photography department, and that's the retail pricing of the Asus ROG Phone 6 and 6 Pro. That's already pretty steep, and with powerful dual front-facing speakers, a blazing fast 65W charger right in the box, Android 12 pre-installed on the software side of things, 5G connectivity (depending on individual market and carrier), and all the other amazing specs and features mentioned above, some compromises had to be made so as not to go over the $1,500 or so mark. There are no compromises to be found in the storage and memory departments, of course, with the ROG Phone 6 Pro packing 512 and 18 (!!!) gigs respectively and the non-Pro model "settling" for 256GB local digital hoarding room and your choice of 8 or 12GB RAM. Tipping the scales at 239 grams, these ultra-high-end gaming phones are obviously likely to be just as cumbersome as their forerunners while offering the bare minimum (IPX4) in terms of water resistance and featuring a pair of ultrasonic buttons supporting all kinds of gestures guaranteed to come in handy... as soon as you manage to master them.
Overall, this is certainly not your typical Android flagship package, targeting a very specific group of users that are however unlikely to ever consider the likes of the Galaxy S22 Ultra as a worthy alternative.
