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The refresh rate of the ROG Phone 3 display is already one of the highest on any smartphone out there.
It does however compete with other devices in the gaming phone space. The recently announced Lenovo Legion Phone Duel is one of those phones. As is the Red Magic 5S that was just announced by Nubia.
But ASUS may have set the bar just a little higher during its development stages. As it was recently discovered that the ROG Phone 3 display actually has the capability to go beyond 144Hz.
This is a hidden refresh rate that isn’t listed in the official spec sheet of the device. But it is there. And if anything it could point to what ASUS may be working on for future gaming smartphones.
The ROG Phone 3 refresh rate can go up to 160Hz
According to XDA Developers, it’s possible to engage the display on the ROG Phone 3 to go up to 160Hz.
Pushing past the official refresh rate of 144Hz. ASUS apparently tested the display in supporting this refresh rate. But it never made it into the final version of the device as a user-facing feature.
At least not without performing a couple tweaks first. The 160Hz refresh rate is there. But to get to it you need to enable some options. Notably though, this requires plugging the device into your PC with a USB cable and pushing commands to it through the ADB Shell.
So this isn’t something that just anyone will likely want to interact with. Moreover, the 160Hz refresh rate isn’t going to be supported by much at this point.
While you may get smoother scrolling on your screen, no mobile games are going to support 160Hz refresh right now. At least not officially. There are barely any that support the 144Hz refresh rate which is the official refresh rate cap on the phone.
ASUS’ 4th-Gen ROG Phone may bump up to a 160Hz refresh rate
This is purely speculation, but it’s not crazy to think that ASUS could actually be considering a 160Hz refresh rate for the ROG Phone 4. Should there be one.
The fact that it’s possible to enable a 160Hz refresh rate in the third phone showcases that the company was at least experimenting and testing the phone with it.
And even if you do need to push commands to the device through the ADB Shell, the feature is still there. The hardware supports it. It might not be properly calibrated, but it’s there.
However perhaps ASUS didn’t see the need to ship the ROG Phone 3 with a 160Hz display. Moving forward, it could look to use that as it’s next step up.