This is the brand new ROG Phone 9. Technically, this is the ROG Phone 9 Pro Edition but it performs the exact same as the base version ROG Phone 9. The Pro just looks different, and the Pro Edition has the AeroActive Cooler X Pro included in the box, as well as the most storage and RAM available. Those are the differences.
Now, with that out of the way – I have high hopes regarding the ROG Phone 9. Equipped with the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset and a beefier cooler, can the ROG Phone 9 cool the device down?
I’ve done way too many tests and here is my full review of the ROG Phone 9 Pro. We’re not talking about the AeroActive Cooler X Pro in this video as we’ve already done a separate video for that. So now, let’s take a look at what it has to offer. Please do subscribe and share since it really took us a long time to redo all these tests multiple times as ROG decided to update the phone multiple times.
Performance
Obviously, we have to talk about the performance first. The ROG Phone 9 series, as mentioned earlier, comes with the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset from Qualcomm. It boasts an entirely new Oryon CPU architecture with major improvements across the board – but how does it perform in real life?
Well, actually very good. The frame rate has been really consistent in games like Genshin Impact at the highest settings. The temperature though… it originally can fly up to around 49°C, but there is a new update after we published the video and that throttled the performance further. We’re still getting great frame rates and it’s mostly at about 47°C – which is what it should have been in the first place.
Just know this – the ROG Phone 8 also had a beefy cooler and that is the only phone that can tame the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. Now, the ROG Phone 9 has an even beefier cooler and it can also tame the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Imagine other phones that are using the Snapdragon 8 Elite but don’t have this beefy cooler – those devices will probably hit 47°C easily.
In games like Zenless Zone Zero with the intense boss fight that lasts for a long time – it is mostly at 60fps though sometimes has some minor frame dips to about 50-ish fps for a split second. Still, it is very stable – but does go up to 48°C.
We did say that War Thunder was not working well on this phone, but since ROG pushed an update or two to the phone – that issue has been resolved and we’re getting a nice and smooth 60fps experience.
Battery life
So, with that out of the way, how’s the actual battery life of the ROG Phone 9? Qualcomm also boasts that the Snapdragon 8 Elite is much more efficient than before. ROG did use a battery that’s beefier than before as well – totaling up to an equivalent of 5,800mAh. I’m saying an equivalent here because ROG Phones use a dual-cell battery connected in series, so they doubled the voltage but cuts the amperage in half. We’ve talked about this in another video – link at the top right corner and in the description.
So, we did a total of 3 different battery tests. One with the LEDs turned off and the refresh rate set to auto. This yields a fantastic 20 hours and 38 minutes in our battery life test. It’s really not that big of an improvement over the ROG Phone 8 even though the battery capacity did increased by an equivalent of 300mAh.
The ROG Phone 9 Pro also has 648 LEDs compared to 341 LEDs we had on the ROG Phone 8 Pro. This will affect the battery life as well, so I turned on those LED lights and left the refresh rate in auto, and ran the battery life test again. This time, we’re getting only 18 hours and 25 minutes. Yikes, this battery life is worse than the ROG Phone 8 Pro with those LEDs turned on.
And finally, if we lock it down to 165Hz – which disables the dynamic refresh rate that saves battery, and turn on the LEDs, the battery life drops to only 14 hours and 52 minutes.
Charging speed
The charging speed is pretty standard for an ROG Phone at this point. It comes with a 65W USB-PD PPS charger in the box and you can charge your phone with either the bottom or the side port.
If you do use ROG’s own included charger in the box, it supports something called HyperCharge – it’s technically the same as 65W USB-PD PPS but has this fancy animation and shows you the percentage of up to 2 decimal places.
To show you what I mean, we charge the ROG Phone 9 with the included charger first – and it goes from 15% to completion in about 42 minutes but the temperature is really high as it can reach 45°C. This is what happens when we try to boost as much wattage as possible to charge the device.
Then, if we use our own USB-PD PPS charger, it charges from 15% to completion in about 46 minutes – well within the margin of error, and the temperature is also a bit lower than before but still high if we consider other phones.
By the way, ROG Phones also have bypass charging – so turn that on if you’re going to play games while connected to a charger.
Screen
As for the screen, the ROG Phone 9 series will be equipped with a 6.78-inch OLED screen with a resolution of 2800×1080 and goes up to 185Hz refresh rate, but only if the game supports that refresh rate. Otherwise, we’re locked down to 165Hz at most.
Now, the screen in itself is actually very good. It can go up to 1730 nits brightness at most and that is very near to the brightest display that we’ve tested.
As for the color accuracy, the ROG Phone 9 with its default settings can cover up to 99.86% of sRGB and 98.84% of DCI-P3 color gamuts. That is just impressive.
Do remember that if you do want to lock it to a high refresh rate, the battery life will be affected. So, my recommendation is to always leave it on auto.
By the way, the phone actually supports 185Hz refresh rate as well – but it can only be turned on when we play games. Some games like Subway Surfers have unlocked FPS, so we can get 185Hz there.
Software
In terms of the software, our particular unit here has been updated to version 1810.78. The experience though, is pretty much the same as before. While it is running on Android 15, the overall software features, the UI, everything just looks and feels the same as before.
Now, that’s not a bad thing as ROG Phones are very close to the stock AOSP, and having no extra bloatware or system apps is definitely a good thing. The features that we’ve seen from the past ROG Phones – like the X Sense to skip dialogues in Genshin Impact, the auto-loot features that automatically picks stuff up when we walk past them, and also the auto-escape from getting frozen or the bubble are very handy features to have. Of course, these features are not perfect – and ROG brought the issues from the previous generations to the new one too.
The AirTriggers are also on the ROG Phone 9 – and they’re no longer using capacitive triggers like the ROG Phone 8 so this one is much more reliable. I thoroughly enjoyed playing COD Mobile and all those games using the ROG Phone 9. I still would’ve preferred a physical trigger like the Black Shark phones, but the company is sadly MIA.
But I have to say – the software update policy of the ROG Phone 9 – no, the entire ROG Phone series, has been a joke. Even this new ROG Phone 9 series will only get 2 generations of Android OS upgrades and 5 years of security updates. I have no idea why ROG can’t provide at least 4 generations of Android OS upgrades since they’re using the top-of-the-line chipset and has a beefy cooling system anyway.
Yet the ROG Phones aren’t cheap and the ROG Phone 9 Pro Edition comes with 24GB of RAM and 1TB of storage.
Design
I think this is also a good time to talk about the design of the phone. The ROG Phone 9 has the exact same shape as the ROG Phone 8, and the Pro version looks the and feels the same as before – but the AniMe Vision has more LEDs now.
There are so many LEDs now that we can play some games on it too. It’s called the AniMe Play and we literally look at the back of the phone and play the games using the AirTriggers. It’s a neat feature for sure.
The camera bump did increase a bit in size, so most of the existing cases wouldn’t fit. For more information regarding case compatibility, check it out here.
Camera
Now, let’s talk about the cameras. This ROG Phone 9 Pro has the exact same cameras as the ROG Phone 8 Pro, but the OIS system did get an improvement on top of the 6-axis gimbal stabilizer.
To have a look at all the pictures and videos taken with the ROG Phone 9 Pro, watch our video at the top of this review.
A few more things to mention
And a few more things to mention about the ROG Phone 9. This phone has two USB-C ports as usual. The bottom port is a USB 2.0 port, whereby the port at the side is a USB 3 port.
We still have an audio jack at the bottom side as well – but you can use the AeroActive Cooler X Pro and “move” the audio jack to the side, so that it is out of the way.
The side port also supports display output via USB-C, so that’s great news for those who want to use this feature.
It has a dual SIM card slot and certain regions of the world will have a single SIM card slot with eSIM support.
I know that we complained about now having front-facing stereo speakers on the ROG Phone 8, but ROG kinda “fixed” that issue by having a case with special contours to redirect the audio to the front. And that works well.
Should you buy the ROG Phone 9?
And basically, that’s everything there is to know about the ROG Phone 9. Should you buy it though? That’s a question that I think is difficult to answer, so let me share my personal thoughts with you.
I think that the ROG Phone 9 is a very incremental upgrade. Yes, it comes with the new Snapdragon 8 Elite but honestly, it looks to be a minor upgrade rather than all the fancy numbers that Qualcomm advertised. Seriously, Qualcomm kept shouting “3 million points in AnTuTu” but that score is unrealistic. I only got that once and never again. I suspect that in order to consistently get the 3 million points, we have to have the phone’s motherboard strapped directly to a Noctua NH-D15 or just put it in a freezer, then let it boost to the highest possible performance.
Oh, the 3 million points I got in AnTuTu was in firmware version 1810.50. With the newest version 1810.58, ROG throttled the performance even further and I can only get like 2.8 million. That’s why I’m saying their 3 million points advertisement is just unrealistic.
If you’re using the ROG Phone 7 or older, I think it could be a good time to upgrade if you want to get highest FPS possible.
As for the price of the ROG Phone 9, it’s as shown on the screen, alongside the accessories price. The AeroActive Cooler X Pro is sold separately, so you can buy the ROG Phone 9 or 9 Pro and then get the cooler later. I personally think that the cooler is not needed but having extra buttons to press is a boon.
Where to buy? (Affiliate links)
Like our Facebook Page here at NasiLemakTech.com for more news and in-depth reviews! Also, join our Facebook Group for insightful information and memes!
Subscribe to our YouTube channel too!
[…] Asus ROG Phone 9 Pro delivers too. One review clocked 20 hours and 38 minutes in a heavy drain test. That’s enough for back-to-back […]