Introducing – the ROG Phone 8 series of gaming smartphones. They look entirely different from their predecessors and that had been a very controversial point. We’ll talk about that and many more in this video and comparison of the ROG Phone 8 base version in the Rebel Grey color and also the ROG Phone 8 Pro Edition.
Instead of having two separate reviews, I’m combining both of them as these two phones are very similar to each other, with only one difference that is actually worth paying attention to.
Design
So we’ll just address the elephant in the room first – the design. This change in design affected everything about this phone – and I mean everything.
The phone is now smaller than before – so it’s more compact in all dimensions. Looking from afar with none of the fancy lights turned on, the ROG Phone 8 series looks assuming – like it’s not a gaming phone, so to speak.
But a lot of commenters in our videos say that this phone “just isn’t gamer enough.” That has to be one of the vaguest comment I’ve seen. What do you mean “gamer enough?” What makes a phone look “gamer” in the first place?
I still think the ROG Phone 8 series looks great, though. The ROG Phone 8 Pro has a sleek, minimalist look with a matte finish. In place of that LCD screen, we now have this AniMe Matrix feature – just like the Zephyrus laptops. We can customize it to display whatever text we want and it can actually be very bright.
As for the ROG Phone 8 non-Pro, there’s an ROG logo but the transition between the colors are very smooth – and also still very bright. I just wish this was also in a matte finish.
Sound quality
From a practical standpoint though, I’m not a fan of this change. You see, making the phone more compact means sacrificing the stereo front-facing speakers for a higher screen-to-body ratio. That also means my right hand will be covering or at least obstructing the bottom-firing speaker, hence a not-so-good sound quality.
If you’re curious, then here’s a quick sound test comparison with the previous generation. Have a listen in our video at the top of this review.
Screen
Then there’s the screen. Both these phones are using the exact same screen but it is slightly different from the previous generation – 6.78-inch AMOLED screen with 2400×1080 pixels in resolution, and still goes up to 165Hz but it is using an LTPO screen now so it can change from 1Hz to 120Hz too. Yes, anywhere between 121Hz to 160Hz is not covered by the variable refresh rate.
Now, the screen itself is actually magnificent. Both the ROG Phone 8 will cover around 100% of sRGB and 98% of DCI-P3 color gamuts with a low ΔE number, and yet the maximum brightness is the best I’ve seen so far – 1700 nits. Yes, 1,700 nits. That’s supremely bright.
But then, there’s a punch hole on the screen. Maybe this is also related to the “doesn’t look gamer enough” sentiment? Because yes, I agree that having a punch hole on the screen is definitely going to affect how we enjoy our games. That’s why ROG we can select to use a cropped view instead of using the entire screen. It’s a compromise that we can make to still get the same experience as before.
Personally speaking, I don’t think this is a problem since my left thumb is already covering a part of the screen, so that punch hole is also going to get covered.
Performance
And now – the performance. Obviously, the ROG Phone 8 series is going to be a fantastic phone for gaming and both of these phones performed the same in our gaming tests.
It is powered by the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset which finally can run Genshin Impact at the highest possible graphical settings at 60fps with no frame drops. There are few stutters here and there, but still the smoothest experience I got so far. However, we don’t know what’s the render resolution of this phone on the ROG Phone 8.
Of course, games will continuously add more graphical features – so we also tested games like War Thunder with ray-tracing turned on to the maximum and the frame rate dropped to somewhere around 60fps only. Still a very good experience, mind you – it’s just that the phone will start to get a bit toasty at around 43°C.
It’s warm to the touch, but definitely nowhere near its thermal limits. When we introduced 3DMark Solar Bay stress test into the equation though, this phone can reach its maximum thermal limit of 60°C. At that point, it’ll be too hot to hold for even a second but realistically speaking, we’re not buying this phone to run synthetic benchmarks anyway.
There’s also the AeroActive Cooler X that I won’t talk about in this video. In short, it only has two shoulder buttons since they removed the back pedals, but its cooling capabilities still aren’t needed while gaming.
Gaming features
Okay, what about the gaming features then? We still have the usual AirTriggers just like before which I personally don’t prefer since I like physical buttons more, the macro + background mode is here, and we can still pair an Xbox controller to this phone and remap all of the keys too.
What’s new is X Sense 2.0. ROG added support for both Honkai Star Rail and Genshin Impact and this feature can do 4 things – skip unnecessary dialogues like from daily commissions, auto hitting the button to get out of a bad situation like getting frozen or stuck in a bubble, auto looting, and also auto running.
To have a look at these functions in action, watch our video at the top of this review.
Software
And that leads us to the software – which I don’t have anything much to talk about. This phone is running on ROG’s own UI is very close to stock Android – and it is running on Android 14. The overall software experience is pretty much the same as before.
Even the Armoury Crate software alongside the features are the same too.
Of course, we can customize the ROG Phone 8’s LED at the back and for the ROG Phone 8 Pro’s AniMe Matrix, we can do a lot more. I just don’t know why we can’t customize the AniMe Matrix when the screen is turned off.
Battery life
And speaking of that – let’s talk about the battery life now. The ROG Phone 8 series got a smaller battery compared to its predecessor – at 5,500mAh. This smaller battery is also due to the phone’s more compact design too.
The main question is – does this smaller battery affect the actual battery life when we use it? Well, thanks to our standardized battery life test, we can conclude that it’s not going to affect much. The ROG Phone 7 Ultimate got 20 hours on the dot with that 6,000mAh battery, but the ROG Phone 8 Pro got around 19 hours and 17 minutes with its 5,500mAh battery. I could have turned off the AniMe Matrix on the ROG Phone 8 Pro to get even more battery life – but that would defeat the purpose of getting this phone anyway.
Either way, that means the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 is more efficient when compared to the previous generation at this kind of low-powered workloads, but there is a lot of headroom to push for more performance when it is needed.
Charging speed
As for the charging speed, it has remained unchanged. Both these phones come with a 65W USB-PD PPS charger in the box – and it charges the phone from 15% to 100% in slightly less than an hour. I’m just glad that ROG is still using USB-PD PPS as this same charger can be used to charge their laptops too.
And surprisingly, this new ROG Phone 8 series has up to 15W wireless charging. However, the charging coil is placed somewhere below the camera bump and it’s not at the dead center of the phone like other phones.
This screws things up in two ways – number 1, every wireless charging pad is designed to have the coil in the middle, so they might not work with the ROG Phone 8 series optimally. Number 2, that camera bump is going to lift up the phone by a lot and create unnecessary distance between the phone and the wireless charging pad. That’ll affect the wireless charging efficiency too.
Camera
Speaking of the camera bump, it’s time to talk about them. These two phones will have the same main and ultrawide angle cameras, but the last camera is going to be different. The Pro gets a 3x telephoto camera whereas the non-Pro gets a macro camera – in certain regions only.
To have a look at all of the videos and pictures taken with the ROG Phone 8, watch our video at the top of this review.
Few more things to mention
Right, here are a few more things to mention – as usual, the ROG Phone 8 series still has two USB-C ports. A USB 2.0 port at the bottom of the phone, and a USB 3.0 port at the side. It supports display output over USB-C if we connect to the side port only.
It is also the first gaming phone to have IP68 rating, an audio jack, and a dual SIM card slot.
Conclusion
Finally – the question of whether should you buy the ROG Phone 8 series of gaming smartphones. I think if you want the latest and greatest performance, then this is definitely the best choice.
But the design choice is very polarizing this time. Some people like this new design, some people absolutely despise it.
ROG also put a lot of focus on the cameras for this generation, that’s why we have a thick camera bump here. A lot of people hate that ROG is putting better cameras on these phones – but some people are forgoing any specialty of the ROG Phone in favor of the iPhone 15 Pro Max because of the cameras. You see the difficult balancing act that ROG has to do?
Speculation – I think ROG is putting more focus on the camera this time around and try to appeal to more people, so they have to do this. This is actually the exact same steps that Black Shark took when they transitioned from the Black Shark 3 to the Black Shark 4.
I still wish there were physical popup trigger but that doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon as this ROG Phone 8 series just achieved IP68. I don’t think they’re going to make another opening and sacrifice the IP rating for the next generation.
There is a price hike compared to the previous generation – which is a given since they did a lot of work to the cameras this time. I just think that ROG didn’t do enough.
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