ROG Phone 2 Durability Test! – Most Powerful Smartphone?

Posted on by Greg Anderson
Posted in Articles, BlogTagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
ROG Phone 2 Durability Test! – Most Powerful Smartphone?


The Asus ROG Phone 2 is probably the most
powerful and feature-rich smartphone that money can buy in 2019. It’s technically a
gaming smartphone ROG stands for Republic of Gamers and Asus has been using the brand
to deliver some pretty innovative stuff. Today we’re going to find out if it’s durable. Let’s get started. [Intro] One of my favorite things about gaming smartphones
is that they are typically a little less conservative design-wise, and let themselves shine…literally,
with built in LED lighting. I’ll turn the back LED logo on in just a second. The ROG
2 has a metal and glass back combo design and has the same copper vent that we saw in
last year’s ROG 1. It looks pretty phenomenal with it’s multi-colored subtle holographic
reflective accent lines that run throughout the dark silver. Let’s start with the scratch
test. The ROG 2 has a large 6.6 inch 1080p screen,
and it’s using the latest version of Gorilla Glass – Gorilla Glass 6, which means that
we shouldn’t see any scratches at level 2 like we saw no the plastic inner screen of
the Galaxy Fold. The ROG 2 scratches at a level 6, with deeper grooves at a level 7. Up here at the top of the phone we find a
singular 24 megapixel front facing camera tucked into the black bezel. The bezels are
slightly larger on this beast due to the internal front firing stereo speakers. They also double
as a place to grip the phone while gaming and in landscape mode. Last year’s phone had
orange-ish colored plastic stuff covering the grill. And this year they’ve made it a
bit more clean and got rid of the orange…which I’m a fan of. The same thing goes for the
secondary front facing stereo speaker grill down at the bottom of the phone. It wouldn’t
be a durability test without finding out what the phone is made from. The ROG Phone has an anodized aluminum body.
There is a SIM card tray down here. It’s a dual SIM but no SD card slot. Even though
there is a 1 terabyte upgrade option for the internal memory which is impressive, it still
doesn’t beat the inexpensiveness and easiness of just adding an SD card down the road. There’s
not a rubber ring around the SD card port which we haven’t seen in a long time. Moving up to the side of the phone, it contains
a rubber plug. This keeps the accessory ports and secondary charging port clean when it’s
not being used. The ROG 2 has 2 USB-C charging ports. This side port can also output 4K video
to a TV or computer monitor and can connect to the external fan cooling units or other
accessories. It’s pretty cool to have options, even if there is no advertised water resistance. The top of the phone has more anodized black
metal, and the right side of the phone has the capacitive touch pad triggers on either
end…just like we would see on a gaming controller. It also has a metal volume rocker and metal
power button. Those capacitive corner triggers shouldn’t affect durability, but we’ll find
out with the bend test in just a minute. Finally, here at the bottom of the phone we
get the USB-C port and we see our little buddy, the headphone jack. I haven’t seen one of
these in a while. A lot of flagship and mid-range phone manufacturers have been dropping the
headphone jack so they can push their own brand of wireless headphones that usually
cost well over $150 or $200. It’s important to remember that there are a lot of good wireless
headphones out there that cost a whole lot less…which brings us to Raycon. Huge thanks
to Raycon for sponsoring this video. Raycon’s totally wireless headphones are half
the price of other premium wireless earbuds and sound just as good. If anything, these
are louder and have more base than any other headphone I’ve tested recently. And I’ve tried
out quite a few different headphones. I mostly use my headphones at the gym or while running,
and these are small enough and light enough that I never feel like they’re falling out.
They have 6 hours of play time with an additional 24 hours of juice stored in the carrying case.
You can get 15% off and check out the additional colors with the link in the description. There’s
definitely no reason to pay big bucks to buy headphones that are the same brand as your
cell phone, especially when there are cheaper and better options like these Raycons. I’ll
let you decide for yourself though. They have free shipping and free returns. And thanks
to Raycon for sponsoring this video. Getting back to the back of the ROG 2. The
main portion of the phone is covered with that gray glass. The vibrant accent lines
and hard camera angles help make this phone look pretty unique. It’s got a 48 megapixel
main camera with a 13 megapixel ultra-wide camera on the side. And there are also 2 different
colored LEDs for the flash. When both colors of the LEDs flash at the same time, it helps
not to wash out the image as much. But the thing that makes this phone physically stand
out the most is the metal growth. Asus says the upper copper portion has a vent that lets
the heat escape out from inside the phone, which is kind of true. We found out last year
that the metal shell was mostly for aesthetics and the copper coloring was also mostly just
for looks. Nothing was really wicking heat away from the processor. There were passive
vents underneath the metal of course, but no internal fans. And the actual heat pipe,
the part that does keep the phone cooled most, is on the screen side, not the back panel.
So we’ll see if that’s the case when we tear down this guy as well. They did include a clear case in the normal
retail box which is nice. It still leaves a little gap for the copper cooling to show
through. Let’s get these LEDs turned on. Now it might look like this RGB ROG logo isn’t
very luminous here on my desk, but that’s only because my desk lights are super bright.
We can see the changing colors when they are shadowed, but in a normal room this would
be pretty easy to see. I’m definitely not opposed to making it even brighter though.
ROG is probably still using that little side-lit deflection thing we saw in last year’s phone.
We’ll have to check it out from the inside of course, but the point is the 6,000 milliamp
hour battery can probably handle a few extra LEDs inside. And it would be pretty cool to
see some more major lights, just like we would see in a gaming PC. Either way this thing
looks pretty cool. The 6,000 milliamp hour battery is probably
one of the best things about this phone, alongside the 120 hertz 1080p OLED panel. For reference,
most phones and monitors these days refresh at 60 Hertz, so having a phone that can display
these movies, games, scrolling, and images twice as fast as usual is pretty interesting.
It does last about 30 seconds under the flame from my lighter which is also cool, or hot,
depending on how you look at it. The screen definitely did not recover though, so don’t
do this at home. I almost forgot about the under screen fingerprint
scanner. It’s easy to tell that the ROG 2 is using an optical scanner. One, because
the whole display brightens to max when it’s trying to sense my finger. And more importantly
it has the green circle of light where my finger is touching. The sensor underneath
the display uses that green light to illuminate the ridges on my fingerprint and then reads
my fingerprint through those LEDs. It’s pretty cool. The under screen fingerprint technology
wouldn’t be possible on an LCD due to all those layers we saw on my last video – just
OLEDs. The good news is is that even with these level 7 deeper grooves marring up the
surface of the glass, the fingerprint reader can still sense my finger and unlocks the
phone every time. Finally, the bend test. This thing is massively
thick and heavy, which by default helps the rigidity of the phone. But even with that
thickness and weight, we still get a flex near the side charging port. I guess having
a hole in the frame weakens it a bit and allows it to flex. But there are no permanent kinks
or cracks in the metal, even when bent from the front side. The ROG 2 is still a solid
beast of a phone and quite possibly one of the most feature-rich smartphones money can
buy in 2019. It passes my durability test. I’ll toss a link for the current pricing of
the ROG 2 down in the description below, next to the Raycon headphones link. Remember you
can get 15% off. To be honest, I got this phone mostly so I could check out the insides.
Hit that subscribe button if you’re into that kind of thing. And come hang out with me on
Instagram and Twitter. Would you ever buy a gaming phone? Or maybe a better question:
do you game very much on your current phone? Let me know down in the comments. Thanks a
ton for watching. I’ll see you around.

How to code a Python random story generator ft. Dr Sally Le Page | Raspberry Pi Projects

Spray foam insulation nightmare: What can happen if it's not installed correctly (CBC Marketplace)

100 thoughts on “ROG Phone 2 Durability Test! – Most Powerful Smartphone?”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *