ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro Philippines review verdict: ASUS’ new gaming phone is the best they’ve put out, and its gentrification into a more mainstream design is the best thing to ever happen to it. If you want maximum mobile gaming performance without having to compromise on the experience, this is the phone to get.

Pros

• The new, streamlined design doesn’t scream gamer
• AnimeMatrix LED lights are fully customizable
• Blazing-fast performance
• Incredible battery life

Cons

• Some gaming-centric features had to be toned down
• Two years of OS updates

 

It’s been a month since I booted ASUS’ new ROG Phone 8 Pro and I’ve been loving each minute with the new gaming flagship. I’ve grown to love the phone’s less ostentatious look, and judging from the reactions of the people I showed it to, the phone’s appeal has significantly widened from its traditional market. Despite being gentrified for normies, the ROG Phone 8 Pro still has plenty of mobile gaming cred, and it’s a phone that I wholeheartedly endorse to anyone who wants a capable gaming phone and has the cash to buy one.

READ MORE:

• ASUS Announces Trade-In Promo for ROG Phone 7
• ASUS ZenBook Duo 2024 Hands-On: The Practical Approach
• ASUS’ 2024 ZenBook Duo Has Two 14-inch OLED Display

ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro Philippines Review: Design

Like I said earlier the ROG Phone has lost the loud, gaming-centric features of previous devices in the line. what’s left is a sleek, matte black design with a black metal frame, with a few, understated grey accents.

The size of the ROG Phone 8 Pro has changed too. It’s no longer a handful as it’s not quite as tall as before, making it easier to hold and use one-handed, though people with small hands still need to be wary.

There are two main points of interest on the back of the phone. One is the revamped camera module that’s stuck on the upper left side of the phone, and the AniMe Matrix OLED at the lower part of the back.

The AniMe Matrix panel is the one concession to the gaming crowd that ASUS made as far as the design for the phone goes. It’s bright, fully customizable, and shows you quickly if you’ve received a notification or if there’s a call coming in. What’s nice about this nifty feature is the fact that if you don’t want it drawing attention to your phone, you can simply turn if off and go stealth mode.

The ROG Phone 8 Pro still has the gaming features that put it on the map when it first launched like the shoulder buttons on the frame as well as the side-mounted USB port that allows it to take accessories like the AeroActive Cooler (now on its eighth iteration), but ASUS has had to pull back on some features in exchange. The shoulder buttons are no longer ultrasonic, so you lose things like slides and hold-to-tap commands in games.

There’s also almost no backward compatibility for previous ROG Phone accessories to this one, so if you’re already invested in the ecosystem, you’re essentially starting from scratch.

The tradeoff is that ASUS has managed to completely seal off the phone from the elements, giving it an IP68 rating, and putting it on the same footing as other flagship phones out there.

Overall, I like the new design. It makes the phone palatable enough to new audiences that would otherwise not be interested in an aggressively gamer-looking phone. The changes made the ROG Phone 8 Pro usable by people with smaller hands and shorter reach, which increased the mass appeal of the previously very niche smartphone.

ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro Philippines Review: Display

The ROG Phone 8 Pro gets a slightly smaller display this time around at just 6.78 inches. It’s still FHD+, but it’s now brighter than before, sporting 2500 nits of peak brightness. It also has a 165Hz refresh rate, HDR10 plus Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection.

Overall the display is still fantastically good, with very accurate colors and natural looking. The LTPO panel can reduce the refresh rate to just 1Hz if needed, which saves a lot of battery when you’re just reading an article on a website.

Once you go gaming, the refresh rate goes up to 165Hz which makes everything nice and smooth.

Unfortunately, one thing that was also nixed by ASUS is the speakers on the ROG Phone 8 Pro. It’s noticeably weaker than the last generation, and while it still delivers quality sound, it’s not as full or as punchy as before.

ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro Philippines Review: Cameras

The biggest change for the ROG Phone 8 Pro is the cameras. ASUS took the time to optimize the cameras on their new gaming phone to compete with the best in the business.

The camera in question is a Sony IMX890, which is a 1/1.56-inch sensor that’s used on comparably good flagships like the OnePlus 11. ASUS also put in a 6-axis Hybrid Gimbal stabilizer that keeps images shaking and blur-free when shooting.

The two other cameras are a 32-megapixel f/2.4 telephoto lens and 3x optical zoom, as well as a 13-megapixel f/2.2 aperture lens for ultrawide snaps.

Images taken from all three cameras look very, very good. The cameras take excellent photos, with lots of detail even in fading light. Details are crisp, the dynamic range is spot on, and while the phone sometimes struggles in low and challenging light, it still produces drool-worthy photos.

ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro Philippines Review: Performance, software and battery life

The ROG Phone 8 Pro might have gotten drastic changes to its exterior, but inside ASUS still put in the most powerful components that they could get their hands on. For the year of our lord 2024, that means Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, with up to a whopping 24GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB of UFS 4.0 storage.

That’s more RAM and more storage than your average PC, which translates to an experience that almost no other phone can top, gaming or not.

Apps open nearly instantaneously, and there’s no game that you can’t crank up the graphics to high with the ROG Phone 8 Pro. Your main enemy here will be heat, as gaming with the highest graphical setting in titles like Genshin Impact will generate higher temperatures that will eventually lead to thermal throttling.

Aside from gaming with lowered settings, one solution that ASUS offers is the use of the AeroActive Cooler that ships with the phone. Gaming with this accessory drastically reduces thermal throttling (almost eliminates it actually) while also adding two additional buttons on the back when you’re gaming.

ASUS allows you to use a gaming theme when you first start using the phone, though you also have the option to go with a more generic, Android setup. ROG UI, ASUS’ take on Android 14, is fairly painless to deal with and doesn’t come with unnecessary bloatware or design elements that don’t make sense.

Armory Crate is where you make most of the tweaks to the system, including the Anime Matrix customization. Everything is easy to navigate and tweak, and if there’s one thing software-wise I’d knock ASUS for is the seemingly short span of software support. ASUS is committing to only two years of software updates for the ROG Phone 8 Pro and four years of security updates, which falls short of the usual 5-year commitment that we’re starting to see from other manufacturers.

The ROG Phone 8 Pro has a 5500mAh battery in it, which is smaller than the 6000mAh in the previous model. I used the ROG Phone 8 Pro while I was in Barcelona as a phone hotspot and navigation aid to get to and from the show floor during MWC, which constitutes fairly heavy use. When I turned in for the night at around 8 PM, I had maybe around 35 percent of the battery left. That’s very good for a normal flagship but doesn’t approach the stamina that I saw when I was using the ROG Phone 7 Ultimate, which is a little disappointing.

Regardless of the battery endurance, the phone’s bundled 65W fast charger will get you up and running in no time, and surprisingly there’s also wireless charging capability this time around. It’s not going to break speed records at just 15W, but it’s the first gaming phone that we’ve used that has that option.

ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro Philippines Review: verdict and wrap-up

If there was a phone that perfectly described the word overkill, the ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro is it. Its specs and hardware make it a formidable gaming phone, one that’s difficult to match when it comes to pure performance.

Aside from that though, it works well as a regular phone. The cameras are great, the battery is good despite being cut down from last year’s model, and the overall aesthetic makes me want to show it off to people instead of just hiding it from people who wouldn’t get the gamer aesthetic.

It’s also priced well in the Philippines. The top-end model that we reviewed from ASUS has an SRP of Php 75,995, far, far less than what I expected it to be when it initially launched a few months ago.

ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro Philippines Review price and availability

The ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro will come in two configurations: the 16GB/512GB variant is priced at Php 60,995 while the 24GB/1TB variant will be priced at Php 75,995. Both variants will include an AeroActive Cooler when ordered from March 7 to April 10, with the 1TB getting another freebie in the form of the ROG Cetra True Wireless.