 Hey, can I call you back? I'm just shooting a video right now. Yeah, it's the ROG Phone 2. It's like kind of a phone, but then it's also kind of like a gaming console. Yeah, it's got like really powerful, massive battery, bunch of cool accessories. Yeah, no, it's pretty neat. I mean, I'm not sure that I would buy it or anything, but there's definitely gonna be people who are gonna go like absolutely ape-sh** this thing. Anyway, yeah, I gotta go. Yeah, yeah, see you later. Love you. Yeah, okay, bye. Editor's note, can you cut that part out? But what you shouldn't cut out is our sponsor for today's video, iFixit. iFixit's ProTech Toolkit gives you the tools you need to tackle any electronics repair challenge. Visit ifixit.com forward slash Linus at the link below and get yours today. Now, whether you've experienced a 120 Hertz display on a mobile device or not, the 6.6 inch HDR OLED panel on the ROG Phone 2 is going to turn your head. This combination can be legitimately described as a visual treat in every scenario we tried with the surprisingly bloat-free interface feeling just buttery smooth and thanks to the doubled 240 Hertz touch pulling rate, nearly instantaneously responsive. But then you hit an LTE dead zone or something, not that I'm blaming the phone and like, I don't think I have felt like my mobile connection has been such a bottleneck on my phone since 3G. I guess Asus thought that might be jarring too because the out of the box refresh rate is just 60 Hertz. That's good for battery life too, I guess, but honestly, it doesn't really need the help. Despite the ROG Phone 2's impressive specs, including the binned Snapdragon 855 Plus and up to 12 gigs of RAM, thanks to its 6,000 milliamp hour battery, this thing got me through two workdays comfortably on a single charge. It lasted for 13 straight hours in Geekbench 4's battery life test and even if it did run low at a critical juncture, it's quick charge 4.0 compatible and even features two charging ports if you wanna charge while you get your game on. And you can really get into your game on this thing because man, these speakers, they're truly something special. And I'm not just talking like, yeah man, they get like real ducking loud, brah. Because yeah, they do get real ducking loud, but somehow Asus managed to provide a shockingly wide and detailed soundstage with just two onboard speakers. You'll run into a little distortion as you crank them up to full volume, but they are surprisingly good. And combined with the beautiful 10-bit display, this thing is fantastic for watching movies. Which isn't to say that the experience is perfect. Nothing is. The camera, like on every gaming phone we've tried, is just not that great. It's clearly based on high-end hardware. I mean, you can tell thanks to the detail captured in this comparison shot against my daily driver Note 9. And the natural bokeh in this shot of Yvonne, for instance, absolutely enhances the look of the image. So no, the problem just boils down to the typical Asus things. Great hardware, bass-acward software. Now to their credit, Asus avoided the over-sharpening pitfall that traps so many other still-learning phone makers. But they fell victim to rookie mistakes in their color science. Look at how unnatural the green in these trees is. My wife's skin tone is very unnatural here. And even in HDR capture mode, the dynamic range in this image is so, so at best. And I feel like I have to mention this, the quick launch shortcut. I mean, yes, it has one, but whoever decided that double-clicking the volume down key should launch the camera should be sent back to user interfaces 101. Not only is it clunky, it doesn't even work if the phone is unlocked or when you're listening to music. So there is no excuse for not having a quick launch these days that makes sense. Apple. By the way, guys, get subscribed and stay tuned for our review of their new phone as well. For now, let's keep going with the other things that aren't perfect about this one. The under-screen fingerprint sensor, still a step forward compared to it being on the back, but it just isn't as reliable as the ones from OnePlus or Samsung. The OLED screen, while very bright, can't go as dim as a note or an iPhone, which can be fatiguing late at night. There's a gap where the screen meets the body that junk can get stuck in. The back is so slippery that if your hands are dry, you run the risk of it literally sliding off of your hand. The port cover on the secondary type C connector isn't captive, so it'll probably get lost the first time you use it. The background during phone calls is such cringe. Wow. The headphone jack, thank you for including one though, is placed where the right-handed population will find it gets in the way in both vertical and horizontal orientations. And despite ASUS' claims of 20 millisecond haptic feedback response time, just tapping the calculator was noticeably slower than other phones that I've used. But at the end of the day, this isn't just a phone, is it? This is a gaming phone for gamers. So what is it like then for gaming? Well, I don't know, because I ran out of Angry Bird bucks or whatever. So I'm gonna kick this one over to Anthony. Actually, it's pretty great. I'm not much of a mobile gamer myself, but it was a pretty enjoyable experience. Without any attachments, the air triggers gave me what felt like actual buttons that I would have liked to have. The configurable pressure sensitivity responds with a haptic tap on both the downstroke and the upstroke, and you can assign them to any on-screen button with a swipe from the left and a tap of the air trigger button. It's seriously so good that I could be fooled into thinking they're tact switches. And through a combination of the touchscreen and triggers, at least in shooters, I found that I was actually more accurate with this setup than I would have been with a real game pad. Furthermore, the screen and the positionality of the audio are so good that I often forgot that I was looking at a phone while playing PUBG until I noticed my neck was cramping up from looking down at it for so long, and I could spend a long time looking down at it, depending on what I'm playing. 60 FPS games like PUBG give me roughly a 10% drain per hour, while high refresh rate games like Minecraft with the visuals cranked, lasted me about four hours and 20 minutes at full bore. And what's nice about that is that you can choose your bore. ASUS's Armory Crate app lets you set up each game on your phone to use as much or as little CPU speed as you want, with preset thermal limits to taste. Remember, most of a CPU's peak energy draw and heat output will be in that last push to reach its maximum speed. So setting a cap will mean that even the most demanding games can last quite a while if you're willing to put up with a lower frame rate. If you want to go the other way, the phone is capable of achieving peak performance on its own in spite of its passive internal cooling. But the included AeroActive Cooler 2 accessory allows it to maintain those speeds at lower temperatures, which means it's less likely to ever thermal throttle. And it goes fast. I can max out PUBG and get a solid 60 FPS, while Minecraft's support for high refresh rates lends it to getting to around 90 plus with typical minimums of 70, and that's with the settings cranked on 24 chunks. It does over 100 all day on 16 chunks. It's quite an experience if you'd never had the pleasure of actually getting good frame rates on a phone. For me though, touch screens only get me so far. I need something a little extra to enjoy mobile gaming, and that's where the kunai comes in. The controller works on both Android and PC via Bluetooth, direct USB connection, or it's neatly integrated 2.4 gigahertz RF dongle. And if your game doesn't support a physical controller, you can set up your own button mappings to on-screen touch controls, just like you can with the air triggers. And when I first saw this thing that it comes with, I thought it was just a separate bumper case, but no. Under these rubber covers are two rails, and the controller just happens to have this Joy-Con thing going on. Slide them up off the rails, slide them on to these. Ha ha. And now you've got a kind of awkward, but still perfectly usable Nintendo Switch style setup. It gets even more ridiculous if you then slot it into the TwinView Dock 2 accessory. Like, can you imagine taking a phone call with this thing? I'll let Linus finish up with his thoughts on the rest of the ecosystem. Hello? Thanks. So, yeah, therein lies the problem. As cool as all this stuff is, I mean, you've got two screens on a phone with a battery integrated into the thing and a cooling fan for good measure. But like, who is this bulky attachment for, really? People don't just buy phones specifically to play games, do they? I mean, I don't. In a given day, I might play a game or two, but I talk to people on the phone, text, take pictures, edit videos for LinusCAD tips, pull up references, and do research when I'm not at my desk, and of course, I read on the toilet. Oh, don't look at me like that. You do it too. Yeah, so... Sorry, my watch went off. Hey, Siri, mute my notifications. To see your notifications, swipe down from the top of your Apple Watch face. How is this basic shit? They're five generations into this thing. Oh God. Hey, Siri, mute my watch. Media volume set to 0%. Thanks. Don't lie, you do it too. And the thing is, shut the fuck up! I can do all of that stuff and game on any flagship phone, and I can do it without all these fancy attachments. So with that in mind, there are some usability compromises that ASUS had to make in spite of their no compromises claim. Honestly, the vibe I kind of get is that ASUS set out to build a game console first and a phone second, which might not be a terrible idea. Like guys, hit me up if you're into the idea of a secondary Android device that you use for just gaming. I mean, in principle, it's not that much crazier than having a phone and a Nintendo switch in your bag, is it? Yeah, it is. Cause I heard a lot of the young kids today play Android games. So if you're one of those, I guess the ROG Phone 2 looks pretty spec fabulous, whether you're talking using it as your daily driver phone slash game console, or even as a secondary device just for gaming. This is hands down, the best mobile Android gaming experience that we have seen yet. But that recommendation needs to come with an asterisk because if you take a lot of pictures or videos, like I had users in our comments, just on YouTube stories, specifically call out the potato video quality when I uploaded things with this, you might wanna consider just buying a galaxy or a pixel and water cooling it instead. Seriously, that's a thing. We did a video on phone water cooling. Go check it out. But before you check out our sponsor for today's video, drop.com. The HD 6XX headphones were a collaboration between then Massdrop, now Drop and Sennheiser. They've sold over 80,000 of these and they're an all time bestseller for drop.com thanks to their balanced mid range, natural sounding base, and the just great little tweaks that they made based on community feedback. So they've got a one eighth inch plug for everyday use, a one quarter inch adapter for professional use. They include a two year warranty from Sennheiser and you can get yours today at drop.com and you can even get 25 bucks off if you're a new user on the website. So check out the link below and pick them up now. So thanks for watching guys. Really hope you enjoyed this video and we will see you in our next mobile phone review. Our next video probably won't be a phone, but it is like September, October. There's a lot of phone stuff happening right now.