The Rog Phone 7 and Rog Phone 7 Ultimate smartphones, the newest additions to Asus’s gaming lineup, is perfect for pro gamers, they offer top-notch specs for an enhanced gaming experience.
The Rog Phone 7 Ultimate Edition has a design that differs in a couple of ways from the standard Rog Phone 7. The most notable change is the inclusion of the PMOLED screen known for its vibrant visuals and full customizability.
The screen also serves as a stylish notification ligh witch lighting up for incoming calls and indicating battery levels. Another exclusive feature of the Rog Phone 7 Ultimate is the AeroActive portal at the top, which I’ll discuss more when talking about the AeroActive cooler.
The Rog Phone 7 is a bit on the heavier side, weighing 239 grams, making it one of the heavier smartphones in 2023. It comes in two colors, Phantom Black and Storm White, but the Ultimate model is exclusively available in white.
The ROG Phone 7 has Gorilla Glass Victus on the front and Gorilla Glass 3 on the back, ensuring decent durability. Its design is typical for a gaming smartphone, not as flashy as some competitors. The Rog branding proudly stands out emphasizing its gaming identity. The camera chassis adds a stylish touch and the matte glass surface prevents quick grime and fingerprint buildup.
In terms of design continuity, the ROG Phone 7 follows the Rog Phone 6 series. Now, it comes with IP54 water and dust resistance providing better protection. The default dark theme might make things a bit hard to see, especially with the thick bezels around the 6.78-inch display becoming more noticeable. Asus offers a good variety of themes to choose from, but the notably thick bezels are evident both at the top and bottom, extending along the edges.
Display and Speaker
Display on the Rog Phone 7 and Rog Phone 7 Ultimate remains top-notch, much like the impressive panel on the Rog Phone 6 Pro and 6 from the previous year. The 6.78-inch screen uses Samsung’s AMOLED technology ensuring vibrant colors, excellent contrast, deep blacks, and crisp whites. HDR10+ support is there, but no Dolby Vision, which is expected as it’s a Samsung panel. The chunky top bezel cleverly hides the selfie camera, eliminating the need for intrusive notches or punch holes.
And it go up to 165 Hertz, although the difference might not be noticeable for everyone. In supported titles, the action is undeniably smooth. Perfect for gaming, the display is flat, features a touch refresh rate of 720 Hertz, and the sensitivity is spot-on, unlike previous Rog Phones that required tweaking.
Moving on to audio, the Rog Phone 7 boasts front-facing stereo speakers with a five-magnet super linear subwoofer. These speakers are impressively loud at maximum volume providing an immersive gaming audio experience. Features like LDAC support and compatibility with codecs like aptX Adaptive ensure premium audio quality. High-resolution audio is also supported enhancing the overall audio experience. It also offers substantial rumble action, thanks to the x-axis haptic motor providing suitable vibrations for an enhanced gaming experience.
Performance
Performance in the Rog Phone 7 Series has taken a significant leap. It houses Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset fitting for a premium flagship phone in 2023. The Rog Phone 7 Ultimate takes it a step further with a substantial 16GB of DDR5 RAM. As expected, the performance is robust, handling even the most demanding Android titles like Genshin Impact flawlessly at optimal frame rates on the highest graphic settings, without any hiccups.
It’s precisely what you’d anticipate from one of the most premium and expensive gaming smartphones on the market. Enjoy games like Call of Duty Mobile at an impressive frame rate of up to 120 frames per second on the Rog Phone 7 Ultimate, ensuring an exceptionally smooth experience. Moreover, this device has achieved some of the highest Geekbench 6 scores I’ve seen, boasting an almost 2000 single-core score and well over 5000 in the multi-core score.
AeroActive 7 Cooler
No need to worry about extended gaming sessions with the Rog Phone 7 Ultimate – Asus has enhanced the cooling setup to prevent any overheating issues. It features a new rapid cycle Vapor chamber and supports the bulkier AeroActive Cooler 7 especially useful when charging and gaming simultaneously. Connecting the cooler triggers flashy actions, and you can customize its settings in the Armory Crate, with cooling modes like Frosty and Frozen for charging and gaming together.
The Ultimate Edition comes with the AeroActive Portal, a lifting flap with cool launch sounds. Even with demanding games like Genshin Impact in X Mode with maxed graphics, the built-in cooling system impressively keeps the phone only slightly warm after over an hour of gaming, without performance issues.
For extended gaming while charging, the AeroActive Cooler is recommended. The Rog Phone 7’s bottom-mounted USB-C port allows comfortable simultaneous charging and gaming. A headphone jack is also at the bottom, and the AeroActive Cooler has a handy integrated kickstand for propping up the Rog Phone 7, especially useful for accessories like the Kunai gamepads. The cooler adds four extra physical buttons that can be mapped to in-game controls enhancing the gaming experience.
Game Genie and triggers
When gaming on the Rog Phone 7, you can easily access the Game Genie toolbar with a quick swipe from the top corner. This toolbar offers a variety of gaming tools and features, you can switch between performance modes and adjust settings like network modes. the Real-time frame rate information ensures a smooth gaming experience. The Game Genie toolbar is crucial for uninterrupted gaming allowing you to disable alerts and calls during intense sessions, like in Genshin Impact.
Within the Game Genie interface, you can set up the air triggers. These triggers, positioned on the top corners, function like regular triggers. They are pressure-sensitive and customizable—drag the L and R icons to any location on the screen and assign them to perform any desired action. What’s excellent is that these triggers support more than just taps; you can also swipe them to execute actions. This functionality significantly enhances gameplay especially in action-packed titles like Call of Duty or Genshin Impact preventing accidental jumps in the heat of the action and becoming a real lifesaver.
Software and Armory Create
When it comes to the software on the Rog Phone 7. It runs on the latest Android 13, with Asus’s Rog UI slathered on top. The UI is highly stylized, featuring changes to icons, fonts, and some very jazzy always-on display action. When you boot it up, you’re greeted with animated wallpapers. if you’re not a fan of all the hyperactive gaming shenanigans, you can opt for the more Zen-like Zen UI.
But honestly, if you’re going for a Rog Phone, you might as well go all-in, immersing yourself in that gaming style. Beyond the surface level, the software is a reasonably stock version of Android, with all the usual features. You have the Google Discover feed and the ability to drag down the notifications bar from anywhere. Asus offers two years of OS updates, so you’ll receive Android 14 and 15 in the future. It may not be the most generous in terms of update duration, but you do get four years of security updates.
When it’s time to get your game on, just tap the Armory Crate app. You’ll enter the proper gaming menu. This is where you can set up your games before diving in. For instance, you have various performance modes to choose from, depending on the demands of the game. For a game like Genshin Impact, you’ll definitely want to enable X mode. You can also customize the performance settings cranking it all the way up to level three restricting background CPU usage, and ensuring that the memory is optimized for the best possible performance.
The ROG Phone 7 takes online gaming seriously offering network optimization to ensure a smooth experience by letting you choose the best network. Powered by Snapdragon graphics, it allows you to boost visual quality to high levels. You can manually set the refresh rate up to an impressive 165 Hertz or leave it on auto. The screen sensitivity is also adjustable. For popular games like Genshin Impact, there are presets for air triggers, or you can manually set them up according to your preferences in-game.
Battery Life
The battery on the Rog Phone 7 and 7 Ultimate featuring dual 3000 milliamp-hour cells for a total of 6000 milliamp-hours. Teamed up with the power-efficient Snapdragon chipset delivers excellent battery life. In my testing, playing Genshin Impact for about five hours on maxed-out graphics settings posed no problem, thanks to this setup. When a quick charge is needed the Rog Phone 7 supports 65-watt fast charging. The charging port is conveniently located at the bottom and on the edge, allowing you to charge while gaming. A full charge takes approximately 40 minutes, ensuring minimal downtime and maximum gaming enjoyment.
Camera
In terms of camera technology, the Rog Phone 7 series maintains a similar setup to the previous generation. The primary shooter boasts a 50-megapixel Sony IMX 766 sensor, accompanied by a 13-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens. The macro camera sees an upgrade, now at 8 megapixels instead of 5. While not groundbreaking, the camera setup performs well for everyday photography needs, leveraging the reliable IMX 766 sensor found in many smartphones from the previous year.
Camera has various modes including light trail and portrait offer experimentation. For video recording, you can capture footage in 4K resolution at 30 or 60 frames per second. If you’re into live streaming games on platforms like Twitch, the most used camera will be the 32-megapixel front-facing selfie shooter. Unfortunately, it’s limited to Full HD resolution and can’t capture 4K footage. Nonetheless, the built-in microphones on the Rog Phone 7 and 7 Ultimate excel at capturing your voice, even from a distance.
Conclusion
The ASUS ROG Phone 7 Ultimate are gaming smartphones with powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, 165Hz AMOLED display, and exceptional cooling. The Ultimate Edition offers extra features like AeroActive portal and PMOLED screen. Despite its gaming roots, the weight and thick bezels may not appeal to non-gamers. And the camera setup delivers reliable performance.
