The ASUS ROG Phone II Review: Mobile Gaming First, Phone Second
by Dr. Ian Cutress on September 30, 2019 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Asus
- Qualcomm
- Smartphones
- ROG
- RGB
- Snapdragon 855 Plus
- ROG Phone II
System Performance
The ASUS ROG Phone II’s system performance is naturally of double interest: First of all, it’s actually the first Snapdragon 855+ based phone we’ve gotten to benchmark here at AnandTech. We don’t have too high expectations over the meagre clock frequency increase of the Prime core from 2.84 to 2.96GHz, but possibly ASUS’ tuning and the X Mode might be able to differentiate performance a bit more above what we see in other Snapdragon 855 devices out there.
We’re testing the phone in both its default out-of-the-box mode, as well as the X Mode:
In the PCMark Web Browsing test, we already see quite a bit difference between the two operating modes. The default mode is quite conservative as is matching the lowest scores that we’ve seen of other Snapdragon 855 phones.
X Mode on the other hand seems to increase the performance here to be more equal in behaviour to that of the Galaxy S10 – the best performing S855 device in this test. It’s to be noted that this test is also very sensitive to various DVFS shenanigans – for example the score might go up quite dramatically if the vendor decides to peg the frequencies to a higher minimum frequency. X Mode in this regard doesn’t behave this way and still properly scales along the full frequency curve – albeit doing it in a much more aggressive manner.
The writing sub-test is one of the most representative of overall performance of a phone. In the default mode the ROG Phone II performs well and is amongst the top S855 devices. Turning on X Mode makes the RP2 stand out amongst its competitors.
In the Photo editing test, the RP2 performs the best in both its modes. The higher scores here can also be attributed to the higher GPU frequency of the S855+ SoC in the device.
Overall, the RP2 lands in as one of the most performing phones on the market, and the X Mode in particular puts it ahead by a large margin. It would come at a cost of power efficiency, but with a 6000mAh battery, the RP2 shouldn’t worry too much about that.
In the web browsing benchmarks, the RP2 oddly falls a bit behind in Speedometer when enabling X Mode. Given that the test is a continuous workload with high load, the different scaling modes should indeed not affect it, but it’s still a bit odd to see the minor regression.
In WebXPRT 3, we’re seeing a more expected scaling between the two modes. The ROG Phone II here is able to take almost the highest scores amongst Android devices, just falling short of the Huawei P30.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
75 Comments
View All Comments
dqniel - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
Incredible hardware. Hideous design.boredsysadmin - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
Gaming for me is secondary, but YUGE 6k battery, 3.5mm audio port mated to the high-performance phone at the same price as other flagship phones - I say why not. In fact, after I read most the article I fail to see the negative points. Why the camera was tested only with daylight? Yes, I expect it to lag behind Huawei/Apple/Google night mode, but I am a potential buyer curious to see to how much exactly it lags in quality.to dqniel - beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
PeachNCream - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
It's pretty ungainly looking to say the least, but it is a lot of innards for a less than typically insane price for a top end phone. Once they're a generation or so older like the first Razer gaming phone is now, it will likely be possible to obtain one for 1/4th or so of the original asking price which might make it worth scooping up as it will still be relatively powerful at that point.Lord of the Bored - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
You mean "awesome stealth fighter design", right?DanNeely - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
So, to indicate that you're in "X mode" they light up a Y shaped area on the default desktop. I don't even...hemedans - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
Thanx for review, probably my next smartphone, am Glad someone is moving away from Notch/glass/bezell less madness.Clamier - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
Yep my too after reading i love it !hanselltc - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
Phone size, Wafer Eater for scale. Nice.Kishoreshack - Monday, September 30, 2019 - link
Incredible HardwareIncredible Design
Asus you just have upped the game
hope you lead the industry & push the boundaries
skavi - Tuesday, October 1, 2019 - link
lol