Newsletter
ASUS has just announced two new ROG-branded gaming phones — ROG Phone 5s and ROG Phone 5s Pro. The devices come as upgraded variants of the ROG Phone 5 and ROG Phone 5 Pro/Ultimate launched in March this year. The most notable upgrade is the Snapdragon 888+ SoC over the vanilla 888. The newer chip has its “Prime” CPU core clocked at 3.0GHz, up from 2.84GHz. Qualcomm has also made performance optimizations to the Hexagon 780 DSP (digital signal processor) and its AI engine.
The processor isn’t the only upgrade on the ROG Phone 5s series though. ASUS claims performance improvements in other areas as well. We will get to them one by one.
ASUS ROG Phone 5s and 5s Pro specifications
The ROG Phone 5s series keeps the 6.78-inch Full HD+ AMOLED display found on all three ROG Phone 5 models. The 144Hz refresh rate remains unchanged and so does the Gorilla Glass Victus protection. But ASUS has increased the touch response rate from 300Hz to 360Hz. This should enable a smoother gaming experience. ASUS has also added a new 90HZ refresh rate mode. That’s on top of the existing 60Hz, 120Hz, and 144Hz options.
The Snapdragon 888+ SoC is paired with up to 18GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage on the Pro model. The vanilla ROG Phone 5s also gets up to 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage but it only comes with up to 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM. The original ROG Phone 5, as well as the 5 Pro, came with a maximum of 16GB RAM and 512GB storage. The limited “Ultimate” edition featured 18GB RAM. None of the devices support a microSD card for storage expansion.
Similar to the ROG Phone 5 Pro, the new 5s Pro also features the ROG Vision PMOLED display on the rear (the Ultimate model featured a monochrome display at the back). There’s no such panel on the vanilla 5s though. The original model didn’t have one either, so there’s not much of a surprise here. Of course, you’re still getting the RGB-backlit ROG logo on the back. Unsurprisingly, the new ROG Phone 5s lacks the two touch sensors on the back cover that you can find on the 5s Pro as well as the 5 Pro and Ultimate. It does get the ultrasonic AirTrigger buttons on the edge though.
The rest of the specs remain unchanged from the ROG Phone 5 series. So you’re getting a 6000mAh battery with 65W fast charging, an under-display optical fingerprint scanner, front-facing stereo speakers, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. There’s the same triple camera setup with a 64-megapixel primary camera, 13-megapixel ultrawide lens, and a 5-megapixel macro camera. The front-facing camera is a 24-megapixel sensor.
The ROG Phone 5s and 5s Pro both run Android 11 out of the box, with ASUS’ ROG UI on top. You get the same gaming and software features as the original models. You can find more about the original ROG Phone 5 series here.
Price and availability
The ASUS ROG Phone 5s series is currently only available in China and Taiwan. The regular 5s comes in Storm White and Phantom Black color options while the 5s Pro only gets a single, Phantom Black colorway.
The company has yet to announce the global availability and pricing details for the new gaming smartphones. The devices will reportedly replace the original models once the stock depletes. So the ROG Phone 5s and 5s Pro shouldn’t cost much higher than what the current models are selling for. The ROG Phone 5 currently starts at $999.99 in the US. We will likely have an official announcement from ASUS soon.
