Review Verdict: While the ROG Phone 9 Pro seems like an incremental upgrade, ASUS did a great job improving the phone’s software and still giving it a competitive price. Beyond having more games support the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s variety of gaming-focused features, ASUS’ AI features work great on this gaming phone.
Pros
- More games support AirTriggers
- Game Genie features are more useful across several games
- AeroActive Cooler X Pro does a good job of keeping thermals stable
Cons
- You can’t maximize the display’s 185Hz refresh rate
- Does not use the fastest Snapdragon 8 Elite chip
ASUS wants to be the undisputed gaming phone king with the ROG Phone 9 Pro. Based widely from its predecessor, the ROG Phone 9 Pro gets a few tweaks and upgrades to make this S-tier gaming phone even better. Is this the only gaming phone you’ll ever need?
ROG Phone 9 Pro Review Philippines: Design
Compare it with the ROG Phone 8 Pro, and you’ll barely see any difference. You get the same matte finish on the back panel, the same camera module design, and the same button and port layout that includes two USB-C ports. The only main difference between the two is how the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s AniMe display is used: aside from showing notifications, ASUS added a suite of retro games that you can play using the Air Triggers.
The retro games include a version of Snake, Space Invaders, Brick Smash, and the Dinosaur Game, and we found all four to be fun, especially in times when you’re stuck without an internet signal and you’re finding ways to not be bored. Despite the minor tweaks, the ROG Phone 9 Pro still keeps the IP68 rating and support for wireless charging all while getting a slightly bigger battery inside.
ROG Phone 9 Pro Review Philippines: Display
Like with the overall design, the ROG Phone 9 Pro has the same display as its predecessor, with the only difference being the refresh rate going higher at up to 185hz, which ASUS pulls off by overclocking the display for select scenarios. Realistically speaking, you’d barely hit the 185hz refresh rate cap except for a handful of games.
In our experience, 120hz should be fine for most mobile games, as you’d be playing at 60FPS or 120FPS at most–the latter if you’re playing MOBA or FPS games. That aside, we’re looking forward to seeing more mobile games that will maximize the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s refresh rate
Save for that, the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s display has everything you’d ask for in a flagship screen: 2500nits peak brightness, support for HDR10+ content, and accurate and natural-looking colors. The speakers have the same audio quality as their predecessors. Still, the AeroActive Cooler X Pro brings back the subwoofer to add more oomph to the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s overall audio fidelity.
ROG Phone 9 Pro Review Philippines: Cameras
The ROG Phone 9 Pro’s cameras are the same as its predecessor: a 50-megapixel IMX890 main camera with gimbal stabilization, a 13-megapixel ultra-wide camera, and a 32-megapixel telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom and OIS.
Aside from the processor, not much has changed with the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s camera performance: in general, it’s a decent shooter—but don’t expect 2025 flagship levels. I’ve used the ROG Phone 9 Pro around Yokohama to shoot cityscapes, and the photos have plenty of detail even when I was shooting at dusk or night.
While we like that the ROG Phone 9 Pro has a telephoto camera, there’s a quirk with it: for some reason, you can’t record 4K videos with the telephoto shooter, but you can do so with the ultrawide camera, which has a lower resolution. It’s the same quirk with the ROG Phone 8 Pro, and we suspect that ASUS is doing this on purpose since it is primarily a gaming phone.
The ROG Phone 9 Pro has a non-gaming sibling, the ZenFone 12 Ultra, so some of the “locked” video features might be enabled with that ASUS phone instead. That should not be a dealbreaker since you can do a lot with the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s main camera, like shooting videos at 8K30.
ROG Phone 9 Pro Review Philippines: Internals and Battery Life
The ROG Phone 9 Pro rocks a Snapdragon 8 Elite processor, and being the Pro Edition version we have a whopping 24GB LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB UFS 4.0 storage on board. While the processor used is less powerful than the one used on the Galaxy S25 series (and strange for a hardcore gamer phone) in benchmarks, the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s advantage is its sustained performance even in long gaming sessions with a more complex thermal management system.
The ROG Phone 9 Pro has a slightly bigger 5800mAh battery inside. While it’s not using silicon-carbon tech, the ROG Phone 9 Pro impresses with battery life. With casual use (X-Mode off), we have a battery life of 20 hours 24 minutes in PCMark, which translates to almost 2 days of use if you’re not gaming heavily with it. If you intend to use it as a gaming handheld, PCMark gave us a result of 8 hours 52 minutes with X-Mode on, which is still an impressive figure since most phones would last around 3 hours on a single charge with long gaming sessions.
The ROG Phone 9 Pro has Android 15 out of the box, and it is heavily skinned with ASUS’ Armory Crate and several gaming-related features. AI is a trend nowadays, and the ROG Phone 9 Pro also has it. One of our favorite AI features is AI transcription, where the ROG Phone 9 Pro can transcribe while you are recording an interview. The delay is very minimal, and it’s a good showcase of the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s on-device AI powers.
ROG Phone 9 Pro Review Philippines: Gaming
As a gaming phone, the ROG Phone 9 Pro has a plethora of tools to help you enjoy your games better. The phone’s AirTriggers have better functionality as more games support them. Some of these notable games include Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact—the latter being significant as ASUS is one of the few brands that has support for key macros on Hoyoverse-developed games without any worries of getting banned.
It took a while for ASUS to maximize its Air Triggers and additional controls on the AeroActive Cooler X Pro for several games, and we’re glad that the ROG Phone 9 Pro lets you enjoy several popular titles with ASUS’ suite of gaming enhancement features. Some games have additional tools via Game Genie to help you with your playing experience. In Genshin Impact, for example, you can enable auto run and auto pickup to help you have an easier time farming for materials when you are building characters.
As for overall performance, the ROG Phone 9 Pro can max out the performance of the most demanding mobile titles in the market, consistently hitting 60FPS even with long gaming sessions. Temperatures can vary: with the Chill Case, temperatures peaked at 45 degrees Celsius when we played outdoors, while using the AeroActive Cooler X Pro with Frosty settings enabled helped keep the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s temperature from going over 40 degrees Celsius. For extra long gaming sessions, plugging in the charger gives access to the Frozen setting, and using this mode on the AeroActive Cooler X Pro saw our temps not exceeding 36 degrees Celsius.
If there’s one thing that all iterations of the ROG Phone excel, it has to be with thermal management: even without an internal fan on the ROG Phone 9 Pro, overall temperatures are relatively stable during intense gameplay sessions, and the AeroActive Cooler X Pro gives you a bunch of extra features: aside from additional cooling, you get extra buttons that you can map together with the Air Triggers, along with a subwoofer to make the ROG Phone 9 Pro’s stereo speakers sound even better.
Like its predecessor, the ROG Phone 9 Pro has an optional Tessen gamepad if you want full controller functions, but there are caveats to it: there are only a few mobile games that natively support it, so you’d most likely run emulators instead to make good use of the Tessen gamepad.
ROG Phone 9 Pro Review Philippines: Wrap-up and Conclusions
Beyond being an incremental upgrade over last year’s ROG Phone 8 Pro, ASUS made good moves on the software side of things with the ROG Phone 9 Pro, maximizing all of its game-specific features across several mobile games–including popular titles.
ROG Phone 9 Pro Review Philippines: Price
The ROG Phone 9 Pro is priced at Php 76,995 for the 24GB/1TB Edition model (which includes the AeroActive Cooler X Pro) and Php 62,995 for the 16GB/512GB model (which does not include the AeroActive Cooler X Pro).
