With less than a week to the official launch date of the Asus ROG Phone 2, Asus has confirmed that the new gaming Smartphone will ship with the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus chipset. It will be the first Smartphone to ship with Qualcomm’s latest addition to the Snapdragon 850 series. That means the ROG Phone 2 will be ahead of the likes of Black Shark 2, Razer Phone 2, One Plus 7 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S10 series and Vivi Apex 2019 which rely on Snapdragon 855.
In other news, leaked Asus ROG Phone 2 photos reveal what the gaming monster will look like. As you may be aware, the ROG Phone 2 will feature a 120Hz refresh rate display. According to leaked images of the Asus ROG Phone 2 by Weibo user Digital Chat Station, the refresh rate can be toggled from 60Hz, 90Hz and 120Hz. It owes much of the design to the predecessor.
The news about Snapdragon 855 Plus doesn’t come as a surprise considering Asus used a binned version of the Snapdragon 845 in the ROG Phone. This time again, the Taiwanese company is taking advantage of Qualcomm’s new release, Snapdragon 855 Plus to remain on top of the competition. The only difference now is that the Snapdragon Plus will be available to all OEMs unlike the binned Snapdragon 845 which was exclusive to the Asus ROG Phone.
While it may not be the only Smartphone with a 120Hz refresh rate, ROG Phone 2 boasts the latest Qualcomm chipset.
“Snapdragon 855 Plus will raise the bar for elite gamers with the increase in CPU and GPU performance and elevate experiences for 5G, gaming, AI and XR, which is something our OEM customers look to us to deliver,” said Kedar Kondap, from Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. “Snapdragon 855 Plus is our most advanced mobile platform to date and will build upon the success of the 2019 Android flagship Snapdragon 855 5G mobile platform.”
The new Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 Plus boasts fast CPU and GPU performance. The Kryo 485 CPU core is overclocked to 2.96GHz up from 2.84GHz translating to 4% improvement. The most significant improvement is in graphics where the Adreno 640 GPU is overclocked by 15% obviously to match the new 120Hz refresh rate. The improved performance makes the Phone 2 a better deal compared to Black Shark 2, which was released in March. The X24 LTE modem has been maintained and you can still connect to an external X50 modem for 5G connectivity.
Upon its release, on 23rd July in China, the Asus ROG Phone 2 will reign as the best gaming Smartphone. Maybe the rumored Razer Phone 3 could outshine it some time, but then it’s not coming anytime soon.
