I never thought the concept of a “gamer phone” was a great idea. Most flagship smartphones and tablets could play whatever mobile game I wanted just fine, so why would I want a phone specifically designed for gaming? It didn’t seem like there was a point. Then I tried the ASUS ROG Phone 9.

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ASUS ROG Phone 9

9/ 10

Experience an unmatched mobile gaming experience with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform, 12GB RAM, and 256GB storage. You’ll also enjoy a cutting-edge 185 Hz display with adaptive refresh rate for power savings.
 

Pros

• Great display optimized for gaming
• Clever design choices make playing games as smooth as can be
• Surprisingly light
• Incredible battery life

Cons

• It can be easy to rub against and hit the air triggers by accident
• The ROG UI needs tweaks for notifications to work normally

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Price and Availability

The ASUS ROG Phone 9 is available at the ASUS Store in two colors—Storm White and Phantom Black—for $999.99.

A Striking Design and Powerful Specs

When I opened the box for the ASUS ROG Phone 9, I was immediately drawn to its white, sleek design. Of course, as a fan of white electronics, I was already going to like how the ROG Phone 9 looked in general, but ASUS managed to put some special details in the design that helped it stand out without being too much of a “gamer” aesthetic. It’s not the type of phone I’d want to cover up with a case.

That said, the ROG Phone 9’s main audience becomes apparent in the design after you turn the handset on. A panel of LEDs on the back (called AniMe Vision by ASUS) will—depending on your settings—tell you the time, alert you to notifications, and more.

The light evokes an old-school pixel feel and looks really cool. You won’t find a feature quite like this on other phones. Don’t worry about the lights waking you up at night either, as you can set the times the backlights turn on and off.

ASUS’s phone is also optimized for gaming on the inside. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite processor and Adreno 830 GPU are built and optimized specifically with mobile gaming in mind, a built-in cooler with multiple settings to keep the ROG Phone 9 from overheating, and a 4K camera to boot. All of this is in a package that only weighs half a pound, which is impressive given all the hardware in it.

Another thing that stands out about the ROG Phone 9 is its camera. You may not expect a great camera on a phone made for gaming, but ASUS didn’t skimp here. On the back, you have three cameras—a main camera that’s 50MP, a 5MP macro camera, and a 13MP ultrawide camera. For comparison, my daily driver (the Google Pixel 7a) has two cameras—a 64MP main camera, and a 13MP ultrawide camera.

This might make the ROG Phone 9 sound less impressive, but it’s not always about the raw specs regarding cameras. ASUS also has other great built-in features, such as gimbal stabilization and AI features that make the images look better than the ones I took on my Pixel 7a. The stabilization is especially welcome to me, as my hands tend to shake when I hit the shutter button. Many images I took on the ROG Phone 9 came out clearer than comparable pictures on my Pixel, and the colors were richer. The ROG Phone 9 also gets more detail in general, somewhat to my dismay since it shows extra dust in my comparison pictures.

Looking closely at the comparison shots, the Pixel 7a shots look a bit more washed out in terms of color palette, but more importantly, the edges of the photos always seemed a bit blurry, whereas that almost never happened with the ROG Phone 9 shots. This is most apparent in the last set of shots—I couldn’t get a clear image of the 8bitDo logo from the angle I chose despite multiple attempts, but every image I took of it with ASUS’s phone had the logo show up clearly.

But while these features and specs are incredible, this isn’t even the best part of the ASUS Phone 9.

Incredible Storage and Battery Life

Despite knowing that the ASUS ROG Phone 9 was made for gaming, I was still very impressed by its storage space. The version I tested had 512GB, and I could download every mobile game I could find in my archives without even getting close to hitting the limit. In comparison, my Pixel 7a has 128GB in total, and my iPad Mini has only 64GB—so small an amount that I ran into storage issues with the tablet.

The space is also important if you’re considering taking screenshots and videos of your gameplay. The 4K files take up a lot of space, and depending on how long you want your recordings to be, you’ll need every gigabyte you can get.

Another big area in which the ROG Phone 9 stands out is its 5,800 mAh battery. Sitting idle, this phone lasted three days before it died—and it wasn’t even at 100% when I set it aside for that long. When playing games, the battery will drain faster (and how fast that drain is will depend on the game), but you’ll still be able to get long gaming sessions in before even thinking about the phone’s battery.

I could play a graphically intensive game for an hour and a half, and the ROG Phone 9 only lost about 30% of its battery. I even watched an hour of YouTube videos, and the battery only lost 2%. I’ve never seen battery life that’s quite as good as the ASUS ROG Phone 9’s.

When you do need to plug the ASUS phone in, the fast charging will get you back to 100% in no time—around an hour, from my testing.

It’s the Little Things

Even with all the specs in mind, the little things are what really make the ASUS ROG Phone 9 stand out. After all, you can find plenty of smartphones with bleeding-edge components that can play any mobile game you want without breaking a sweat, but none are built specifically with gamers in mind.

First are the unique Air Triggers. When holding the phone in landscape mode, there are two ROG symbols on top, in about the same location as triggers would be on a typical game controller. The Air Triggers are essentially programmable touchpads, so you can choose their assigned actions depending on the game and have more control. It’s very helpful for games that have a lot of buttons on the screen, like Genshin Impact.

There’s also a genius inclusion of a second USB-C charging port on the side of the phone, so you can easily plug it in and charge even while gaming. This is a welcome addition because it can be frustrating to use your phone while gaming when plugged in from the normal bottom port. The ROG Phone 9 even has an AUX port, which is exceedingly rare with smartphones these days.

Then we have things like the Armoury Crate app, which creates profiles for your games, tracks time played, and makes it easy to access the screenshots and videos you captured. There is even a special ASUS ROG wrap for Android that works to improve your gaming experience—though, admittedly, I needed to tweak some settings when I used it so that notifications on the tray weren’t so annoying to get to. But after changing some settings around, the ASUS wrap looked and worked great.

Games Run Buttery Smooth

I could go on about the phone’s build all day, but the most important question remains: How well does the ASUS ROG Phone 9 play games? The answer, unsurprisingly, is very well.

When testing the ROG Phone 9, I downloaded various games to see how they played. This included graphically intensive titles like Honkai Star Rail and Mario Kart Tour, as well as some older, less optimized games, to see how the phone would handle them.

Regardless of what title I chose, the ASUS ROG Phone 9 played them extremely well. The only time the phone got hot was when the games were initially downloading, which makes sense considering how much data the phone was processing. Once in the game, I never had the phone heat up, nor did I need to change the cooler settings from beyond ‘Dynamic.’

The games never hitched or lagged, and they all looked incredible on the large AMOLED screen. It didn’t matter if it was a game in portrait or landscape mode, old or new, or how action-intensive it was; the ROG Phone 9 simply played it and played it well.

Even when I downloaded a game released while testing the phone—Infinity Nikki—the ROG Phone 9 had no issues playing the graphically intensive title. In fact, it played better on the phone than it did on my PC! While some of that has to do with the game being optimized for mobile, it still speaks volumes as to how powerful the phone is.

The Trouble with Touchscreen Controls

The thing about mobile gaming is that unless you get a mobile controller, you’re playing games on a touchscreen. For many like myself, the lack of tactile feedback doesn’t feel great, especially if you’re playing a game that’s more on the action side of things. Then, there can be problems with losing inputs if, for whatever reason, your phone doesn’t always recognize your fingers touching your screen. This isn’t even covering their worst problem—sometimes your hands are just in the way of what’s happening on the screen!

For what it’s worth, the ROG Phone 9 does try to mitigate some of these issues. There is a setting so you can choose whether the game takes up the entire screen or uses letterboxing to make it easier to see everything happening. The Air Triggers allow you to move some actions entirely off the screen, which helps even more with visibility. A lot of the standout features of this smartphone are, in fact, meant to make mobile gaming as enjoyable as possible.

But you just can’t make a touchscreen feel like an Xbox controller, and if you prefer that tactile feel when playing games, the ROG Phone 9 won’t be able to change that (though you could buy a mobile controller). But for those who already enjoy mobile gaming and don’t mind (or even prefer) touchscreen controls, this phone will take your gaming to the next level.

Should You Buy the ASUS ROG Phone 9?

If you love mobile gaming, the ASUS ROG Phone 9 is for you, hands down. This is an incredible piece of hardware—one optimized specifically for gaming in a way no other flagship phone is. The ROG Phone 9 goes far beyond just gaming, too, and even if you’re browsing social media or watching videos, you’ll be impressed by its performance.

It may not change your mind about mobile gaming in the first place, but if you play your games mostly on your smartphone, you won’t be disappointed by the ROG Phone 9.

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ASUS ROG Phone 9

9/ 10

Experience an unmatched mobile gaming experience with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform, 12GB RAM, and 256GB storage. You’ll also enjoy a cutting-edge 185 Hz display with adaptive refresh rate for power savings.
 

See at ASUS