ROG Phone 9 Pro – The FINAL Boss?

The ROG Phone 9 Pro seems to be a phone that is meant to be used in 2025. It’s insanely fast. It doesn’t overheat when you play games; it can even play PC emulation games.

In this video, I’ll answer two questions: Is this the final boss of all smartphones, and is it worth it?

 

Unboxing

First of all, this has to be the most unique unboxing experience ever. The way the phone just rises up when you first open the box really reminds me of a character stepping up on stage like, “Welcome, Chosen One”

So here’s what you get when you unbox the package: a 65W fast charging brick, a braided USB-C to USB-C cable, a ROG-branded SIM ejector tool, a phone case, and the paperwork. So yes, a very nice unboxing experience indeed.

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Design & Build

ASUS has really nailed the art of making gaming smartphones because this looks premium, but it doesn’t look like a toy or scream “gaming phone”. They’ve toned down the design but added some layer of sleekness.

Besides the matte textured finish, there is a metallic band breaking the design into two sections. The overall textured feel at the back not only made it super nice to use daily but also to game for long periods of time since it is a gaming smartphone anyway.

But speaking of which, the camera bump design was the only giveaway that this is a gaming-centric phone, especially with the red line towards the bottom right of the camera bump area.

So the phone has a plethora of buttons included. Some you can see, some you can feel. Other than the standard volume rocker and the power button, there’s the signature AirTrigger shoulder button, which is something that you can feel when you’re gaming as there are capacitive buttons.

Speaking of not seeing, a clever feature that ASUS has added is the hideable AniMe Vision display. This is a fully customizable LED panel that can display useful information in a glanceable notification, it gives you the battery life and the time, or even customizes it in the settings to whatever you want. 

You can even play some old-school mini-games set at the back as well, which was nice and a very unique feature as well. 

I did end up appreciating this AniMe Vision display a bit more than I really expected. But just so you know, you can turn this on or off in the notifications menu.

Just like before, if you’re not familiar with gaming smartphones, there are two USB-C charging ports if you’re using the phone in a gaming or landscape orientation. 

One is at the bottom, and also the other is at the side. But the side USB port is not in the middle like a typical smartphone, and this is to ensure that you can charge the phone and play games without having the cables interfere with your gameplay.

But speaking of typical smartphones, yep there is a headphone jack over here too, so that was nice.

 

 

Display

The screen is a 6.78-inch Samsung Flexible AMOLED display. It is an LTPO panel that has a refresh rate that dynamically adjusts between 1 Hz to 165 Hz. You can set this to change automatically in the settings, or you can manually choose between each refresh rate in the display settings as well.

But what’s really interesting is the fact that when you’re gaming, you can boost it all the way to a massive 185 Hz through the Game Genie. Yep, 185 Hz. That is just insane because the screen refreshes faster than my brain even after my morning coffee.

The display colors are vibrant, and it supports HDR 10+ with a peak brightness of 2500 nits. While it’s not the brightest compared to other newer Android flagships, you won’t have any issues when you’re using this outdoors, where it was very visible even when I was taking photos and videos during very intense sunlight too.

For watching videos, the phone comes with a Widevine L1 playback certification on Netflix, so the screen is not only properly optimized for gaming but also for watching videos.

Durability-wise, it has a Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection.

 

Camera

While gaming smartphones aren’t exactly known for their cameras, this ROG Phone 9 Pro does a pretty solid job over here. There is a 50 MP main sensor with OIS, a 32 MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom, and a 30 MP ultrawide lens.

Based on me testing the cameras out, there are the good and the not-so-good. The good is the fact that the main lenses and the telephoto lenses up to 3x zoom were great. 

The portrait mode for the rear camera, specifically for the 2x and the 3x, and the selfie portrait were really nice too. 

Stabilization for video was really great since it has OIS for the rear cameras, it can record up to 8K 30 FPS. (Sample video footage in my YouTube video)

But the not-so-good is the 1x portrait mode, which had an HDR kind of effect. 

The nighttime photos were just decent, and the front cameras, especially for the video cameras, are totally not good.

The reason why it’s probably not good for video recording for the front camera, especially at night, is the fact that it can only record up to 1080p. 

And this really shows that the elements of video recording on a smartphone like this are not their biggest priority when it comes to video recording.

 

Gaming

On to the “main course”, which is gaming. Before that, just so you know, this phone uses the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite 3nm chip with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512 GB of UFS 4.0 storage.

So yes, this phone blazes through every single game I throw at it, even heavier games like Genshin Impact. The phone just chewed it up and just spat it out like it was nothing.

I had Genshin Impact on its maximum settings, and I managed to run the game at a smooth and consistent 60 FPS. It did dip into the mid-40s here and there during prolonged gameplay, but generally, it ran close to 60 FPS.

I also played COD Mobile on this on the highest graphic settings, and the game played very well with high frame rates.

But the special sauce of playing these two games is with the AirTriggers, because it was such a revelation to the point where I can’t go back to playing games on other smartphones without feeling like I was cheating.

One thing that I was a little concerned about testing this phone is the heat issues on the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset. Because up until now, there are some online reports that mention that some people are experiencing some overheating warnings and some crazy high temps.

And thankfully, I didn’t encounter these issues. While I did experience some level of warmth during playthroughs, it was nowhere near as expected or reported online.

But it was only two times—just two times—when it was really hot to the touch. And that was not when I was gaming, but it was when I was taking photos and videos consistently during very harsh daylight.

So yeah, it seems like the combination of the phone’s GameCool 9 thermal system together with ASUS software tackled the gaming performance head-on.

Then to test the chip even further, I tried emulating games as well, where I went as far as trying PC game emulations too, and the results were surprising.

PS2 emulation ran unsurprisingly well with consistent 60 FPS throughout the multiple games available. PC emulation is something that I have never tried before on a smartphone, so I was really excited to try it on this.

I tried GTA 5, and to my absolute surprise, the phone managed to run the game smoothly at around 40 to 60 frames.

So yeah, this goes to show how far technology has come, where it shows just how powerful this phone is too. Because never could I imagine playing actual PC games on a mobile device like this.

Then the dual front-facing speakers were loud, and the audio was clear and perfect for gaming without any headphones, which I tend to do a lot.

But if you are someone who loves gaming accessories, ASUS has a lot of ecosystem of add-ons, like the AeroActive Cooler or the ROG Tessen Controller, to take your gaming experience to the next level.

 

 

Battery

As for the phone’s battery, the massive 5800 mAh battery gave me an amazing battery life for about 9 hours of screen-on time when I was about 14% battery with heavy gaming, social media, and other media consumption. So this is easily a 2-day phone.

One thing that really stood out to me was the idle time on this phone, where it’s not like other phones where the battery drains even if you’re not using it. So that’s probably the reason why the battery life on this phone was really good.

There is a 65W fast charging which goes from 0 to 100% in about 50 minutes. There’s also 15W of wireless charging and 10W of reverse wireless charging as well.

 

Software

ASUS has kept things simple on the software side. The ROG UI is clean, snappy, and packed with gamer-friendly features. I have to mention the haptics of the phone because it is the best that I’ve ever tested so far.

There is the X Mode for optimizing performance during gaming. The Armoury Crate app lets you fine-tune every aspect of your gaming experience. 

And the phone also runs on Android 15, where ASUS has promised to have 2 major Android updates with 5 years of security patches. That is not the best policy compared to other smartphones, but it is pretty decent for a gaming phone.

 

Conclusion

With a retail price of RM4,999 or about USD 1,100, the phone is not “cheap”. 

But think of it this way: it’s like buying a gaming PC, a console, and a phone all in one, except this fits in your pocket.

🛒 Get the ROG Phone 9 Pro at the link below:-

Shopee (MY) – https://invl.io/clm7e34
Lazada (MY) – https://invol.co/clm7e35