ASUS continues to develop and update its ASUS ROG Phone line of gaming smartphones. The ROG Phone 8 line was significantly different from its predecessors, although its basic idea remained unchanged. At the same time, it became a little closer to traditional flagship smartphones, which expanded the potential audience. The current ASUS ROG Phone 9 line continues this idea. And today we will tell you about the current flagship ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro: what has changed and how interesting it is.
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro specifications
| Dimensions and weight | 163.8 x 76.8 x 8.9 mm227 grams |
| RAM and storage | 16 / 256 GB or 24 GB / 1 TB |
| Processor | Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite |
| Graphics processor | Adreno 830 |
| Wireless modules | Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac6e/7 (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz); Bluetooth 5.4 aptX HD, aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless, LDAC; NFC |
| Display | 6.78-inch LTPO AMOLED SamsungResolution: 1080×2400 dots, 388 ppiFrequency: 165 Hz, Game Genie: 185 HzPeak brightness: 2500 cd/m²; HDR10+, HLG |
| Main cameras | 50 megapixel wide-angle, 1,0 µm, ƒ/1,9, phase detection autofocus, 6-axis stabilizer Hybrid Gimbal Stabilizer 4.0;32 megapixel telephoto, ƒ/2.4, phase detection autofocus, optical stabilization, 3x zoom;13 megapixel ultra-wide-angle, ƒ/2,2, 120° |
| Front camera | 32 megapixels, ƒ/2,5 |
| Audio | Stereo speakers, 3.5 mm jack, 32-bit/384 kHz Hi-Res support, Hi-Res wireless |
| Battery | 5800 mAh |
| Charging | Wired up to 65 W, wireless up to 15 W, 10 W chime |
| Connectors | USB Type-C |
| Operating system | Android 15 + ROG UI |
| Recommended price | Expected for sale |
Package contents
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro is available in two variants and their configuration is different. The top-of-the-line variant called ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro Edition came to us for review. And, in addition to more RAM and built-in memory, it has a few extra bonuses in the package.
Unlike the previous ASUS ROG Phone 8 Pro, the new flagship has a more classic large square black box with red accents. Inside is the smartphone itself, a 65W power supply, a Type-C cable with a fabric braid, two protective bumpers, an external active cooler AeroActive Cooler X Pro, a case for it, a tool for removing the tray, and documentation.
One of the protective bumpers is made of clear plastic and is generally quite standard. The second one is made of black plastic and has a large hole in the back so that it can be used with the AeroActive Cooler X Pro.
The standard version of the ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro will only come with a transparent protective bumper and no AeroActive Cooler X Pro with a case.
Design and ergonomics
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro continues the style of the previous model. It seems that the same chassis is used: the dimensions of the smartphones are completely the same. As before, the back cover of the smartphone looks the most interesting. It's made of matte protective glass with an interesting crystalline texture that glints slightly at certain angles. At the same time, it does not collect fingerprints.
The lid has a diagonal glossy stripe, the ROG logo, and several other decorative inscriptions. But, as in the previous generation, the most interesting element is the AniMe Vision backlight system. Unlike the previous model, there are 648 LEDs instead of 341, and red ones have been added. With AniMe Vision, the smartphone can display notifications, the charging process, media playback, the camera timer, and even simple games (more on that later).
There is a separate section in the Armory Crate app for detailed configuration of AniMeVision:
The rear camera module is quite massive and protrudes significantly above the back cover. Under the common glass are three cameras and a flash. There is a small stylized step around the perimeter, and the lower right corner is cut off, with the ROG inscription and a red stripe.
From the front, ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro looks like most modern large smartphones. There are minimal bezels around the perimeter, a camera in a small round hole, and a barely noticeable speaker slot above. The screen is flat, without curves. It is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2.
Last year, not all users liked this "classic" design. After all, older models of the line had a larger gap above the screen where the camera was located. Accordingly, there was no notch in the screen. In the settings, you can hide the notch with a black area on the screen, or make such areas symmetrical on both sides. These settings are also available individually for individual games or applications.
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro has a matte black metal frame. It's flat with minimal curves for a smooth transition to the back and front panels. The power and volume buttons are located on the right side at a fairly comfortable height for both left and right hands.
On the same side there is an additional microphone, as well as touch triggers, they are marked with ROG engravings.
On the opposite side there is an additional side Type-C connector. It can be used for more convenient charging while gaming, or for connecting the AeroActive Cooler X Pro. It supports DisplayPort 1.4 output.
On the top edge of ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro is an additional microphone. At the bottom, the company has arranged many functional elements. In addition to the speaker, microphone, Type-C, and tray, there's a standard 3.5 mm audio jack, which is almost unheard of in flagship smartphones anymore.
You can install 2 SIM cards in the tray. The lack of eSIM support was quite surprising in the previous generation. ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro has it, but only in versions for a few regions. Ukraine is not on the list.
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro is a large and rather heavy smartphone, which is not surprising given its positioning and capabilities. Its dimensions are 163.8x76.8x8.9 mm and it weighs 227 g. But it's a pleasure to use, it feels solid and expensive. And it looks stylish and unusual. Although it is a bit slippery without a protective bumper. There is protection against dirt and water according to the IP68 standard.
Display
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro has an LTPO AMOLED display manufactured by Samsung. The diagonal is 6.78 inches, the resolution is 2400x1080 (20:9), and the pixel density is about 388 ppi. The screen is protected by Corning Gorilla Victus 2 glass. A 10-bit matrix is used, displaying display more than 1.07 billion shades of color. They promise color coverage of 107% of the DCI-P3 space and a local peak brightness of 2500 cd/m² in automatic mode.
The display supports the HDR10 and HLG standards for enhanced dynamic range. There is no support for Dolby Vision. Thanks to the use of an LTPO matrix, the adaptive refresh rate can vary from 1 Hz, which is especially useful for saving energy. The maximum refresh rate is 185 Hz, but it is only activated in Game Genie in games that support it. In normal mode, the maximum is 165 Hz. The polling frequency of the touch layer in game mode is 720 Hz.
In the settings, you can choose between dark and light themes, enable night mode, eye protection, low-brightness flicker (DC Dimming), select the refresh rate, interface scale, animation speed, Always on Display, and Splendid color schemes. There are four of them. It is possible to adjust the color temperature.
The screen ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro is of excellent quality. Theis already bright and does not fade in the bright sun. Colors are very saturated, viewing angles are maximized. The screen is almost devoid of the typical AMOLED feature when white color has a greenish or bluish tint at a certain angle.
The maximum brightness in "Optimal" mode was 896.34 cd/m², which is a very good indicator. The color gamut is significantly higher than sRGB, with a color temperature of 7500-8000K against a reference value of 6500K. Therefore, the image has a slight emphasis on cold shades. You can fix this in the settings.
In the Standard mode, the color gamut is almost identical to the sRGB space, the color temperature is also around 7500-8000K, and the maximum brightness is 872.78 cd/m².
Security
To identify the owner, ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro has a quite standard modern set of tools. First of all, it is an optical fingerprint scanner under the screen. It turned out to be very fast and accurate. In terms of these indicators, it is practically not inferior to ultrasonic options.
It is located quite high. How comfortable it is is a matter of individual preferences and physiological characteristics. I found it comfortable to use, no need to grab the smartphone below, risking it falling out of my hand.
Face recognition using the front camera is also supported. This function is standard: the security level is lower than that of fingerprint recognition. The speed is high in good light.
Performance and software
The most interesting thing is inside the ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro. One of the most powerful mobile processors in existence, the flagship Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite, is responsible for performance. It would be strange to see any other solution in a top gaming smartphone. The processor is manufactured by TSMC using a 3-nm process technology and contains two Oryon V2 Phoenix L cores with a frequency of up to 4.32 GHz and six Oryon V2 Phoenix M cores with a frequency of 3.53 GHz. Adreno 830 graphics accelerator with a frequency of 1.1 GHz.
Compared to the previous flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, the Snapdragon 8 Elite is said to offer up to 45% CPU performance improvement, up to 40% faster GPU, and up to 40% NPU improvement. And ASUS claims that the ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro is 30% more efficient than the 8th generation ROG Phone. The smartphone has 16 or 24 GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 512 GB or 1 TB of internal storage with UFS 4.0.
In the benchmarks of , ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro demonstrates quite expected and very high results and is one of the most powerful Android smartphones available. At the same time, the Snapdragon 8 Elite really shows a very tangible performance increase compared to the previous flagship chip. The performance of the smartphone will be enough for the next few years. Results in X mode without an external cooler:
With the external cooler AeroActive Cooler X Pro, an even more productive X+ mode is available. With it, the results do not differ dramatically, the increase is not very large. But with an external cooler, you can expect more stable long-term operation and a cooler case:
In any heavy modern games, you can safely set the maximum graphics settings and get a stable 60 FPS. Or even more, it all depends on the high refresh rate supported by the game itself. All games were tested at the highest possible graphics settings and ran at the highest possible and stable frame rate. Games tested: CoD Mobile, NFS No Limits, Shadowgun Legends, Genshin Impact, Wuthering Waves, Lost Echo, and Diablo Immortal:
The smartphone uses the GameCool 9 cooling system with the 360° SoC Cooling System Gen 3 design, which includes two graphite plates, an evaporation chamber, and a bunch of other interesting elements. And it is quite effective even without an external cooler. The CPU Throttling Test showed that under prolonged loads, the processor can drop performance by up to 84%, which is a good indicator for such powerful chips.
With the AeroActive Cooler X Pro, in addition to higher performance with X+ mode, the smartphone also cools more efficiently: a performance drop of up to 89%:
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro is equipped with almost all modern wireless interfaces: tri-band Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/6e/7, Bluetooth 5.4 with support for AAC, aptX, aptX HD, aptX Adaptive, aptX Lossless, LDAC, and NFC codecs. Global positioning systems GPS, GLONASS, GALILEO, BDS, QZSS and NavIC are supported.
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro runs on Android 15 with the ROG UI shell. Two major OS updates are promised. The main changes compared to stock Android are cosmetic, although there are a few interesting little things from ASUS. The organization of the workspace is familiar: desktops, widgets, an optional separate application menu. There are many opportunities to customize the appearance.
The Quick Settings panel is available in three versions. The standard Android one with large toggles, a variant with small toggles, or a split panel with separate notifications and toggles.
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro has the ability to customize additional gestures for quick launch and control of applications, including gestures on the locked screen and touches on the back.
There is a sidebar with quick access to useful functions and the most frequently used applications:
The application manager has a standard view: a horizontal set of cards. There is support for a split screen:
There is a game application and an overlay called Game Genie. It allows you to select a performance profile, fix the brightness, block notifications, show current information about the system load, temperature, and FPS, take screenshots, record videos, set up macros, touch triggers, and more.
Like the vast majority of modern smartphone manufacturers, ASUS is implementing some AI features. These include image generation, text and voice recognition and translation, etc. However, only AI functions related to camera functions or image generation are fully operational. Everything related to text and voice does not yet have support for the Ukrainian language.
Out of the box, ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro comes with a minimum of proprietary applications, and all of them are quite useful: smartphone manager, file manager, calculator, voice recorder, ASUS Phone Clone, and more:
AeroActive Cooler X Pro, ASUS ROG Tessen and additional gaming features
Now let's talk a little about ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro accessories and additional gaming features. The AeroActive Cooler X Pro external cooler hasn't changed much since the last generation. It connects to the side Type-C, "clamps" the smartphone and cools it due to a fairly large contact area.
The AeroActive Cooler X Pro fan is said to have blades that are 12.5% larger in diameter. This, combined with the increased contact area, provides 29% more efficiency. The cooler has four operating modes that can be customized in the firmware. The highest performance mode is available only when connected to an external power supply. The cooler makes quite a bit of noise in this mode.
But that's not the end of the AeroActive Cooler X Pro's features. Of course, there is RGB lighting on the back, but the folding stand and built-in subwoofer are much more useful. And while the stand is generally obvious, the subwoofer turned out to be more effective than one might expect. With it , ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro already sounds like a good portable Bluetooth speaker.
There are two additional buttons on the sides of the cooler that can be used as triggers. The cooler also has Type-C and 3.5 mm headphone jacks on the case. They are located at the bottom, which is convenient when playing games. But it's not very convenient if you put your smartphone on a folding stand.
We also received a new ASUS ROG Tessen gamepad for smartphones. It has an interesting folding design and supports the connection of smartphones of different sizes. The set includes various interchangeable rubber pads for better fixation of smartphones. The gamepad handled the large ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro without any problems, even without removing the protective bumper.
The gamepad itself has an almost standard set of controls: two sticks, a D-Pad, triggers, bumpers, and the main four buttons. Among the less familiar controls are the petals on the back, which can be programmed as you wish. The layout of the controls is quite familiar, but the dimensions are smaller than those of standard gamepads.
ASUS ROG Tessen does not have its own battery and is powered by a smartphone. However, there is a Type-C port for charging at the bottom of the right grip. It's a pretty interesting accessory for those who really play games on their smartphones all the time. Especially for fans of shooters, action games, and racing.
Just like the previous generation, ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro is equipped with Air Trigger touch sensors. You can customize their actions for each game in the Armory Crate app. Double taps are also supported. And to minimize false positives, you can adjust the sensitivity. Also, for some actions in certain games, it may be convenient to use the gyroscope of your smartphone.
And perhaps the most unexpected little thing that can hardly be called extremely useful is AniMe Play. ASUS has decided to add the ability to play the simplest classic games like snake on AniMe Vision LEDs. Air Trigger is used for control .
Sound
The implementation of stereo sound in ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro is quite standard for modern smartphones: the main and earpiece speakers. Unfortunately, there was no way to compare it with ROG Phone 8 Pro. But given the almost identical design, we can assume that the sound of the smartphones is the same. ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro sounds really loud. And, what's really important, it has some low frequencies. At the same time, at maximum volume, the sound is not too distorted, as is the case with many smartphones.
To customize the sound, there is an Audio Wizard application with ready-made settings for different usage scenarios and a 10-band equalizer. The smartphone supports Dirac Virtual surround sound. Owners of good wired headphones have a 3.5 mm jack for connecting them, and for wireless models there is support for a bunch of codecs, including LDAC.
As for the sound and microphone quality during conversations, there were no problems during testing, and the interlocutor can hear the voice clearly in most situations. Except maybe in the subway.
Cameras
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro cameras are very close to ROG Phone 8 Pro, the difference is minimal. The rear unit includes three cameras. The main module is a 50-megapixel Sony Lytia 700. It has a physical size of 1/1.56", a pixel size of 1.0µm, f/1.9 aperture, 24mm ESP, PDAF phase detection autofocus, and optical stabilization with Hybrid Gimbal Stabilization. It has been updated to version 4.0 and is capable of correcting motion in the range of +/-5°. The main camera can shoot video with a resolution of up to 8K 30 FPS. There is adaptive stabilization for 4K and HyperSteady at FullHD resolution.
The telephoto camera has a resolution of 32 megapixels, 1/3.2", a pixel size of 0.7 µm, f/2.4 aperture, 3x optical zoom, optical stabilization and phase detection autofocus. The ultra-wide-angle camera has a resolution of 13 MP, f/2.2, a viewing angle of 120°, and no autofocus. The front camera is 32 MP, f/2.2.
The camera app has standard user-friendly logic. The basic modes are placed in the main "carousel" and can be switched by horizontal movements. Additional modes are highlighted in a separate menu and can be added to the basic ones. All basic settings are available on the viewfinder screen (flash, format, camera switching, etc.). Additional settings are available in the drop-down menu.
During the day, the main camera of ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro takes high-quality detailed photos with a wide dynamic range and close-to-natural colors. HDR works well, and dark areas are well extracted. Night photos hardly lose any detail. However, there is a yellowish tint, which is quite common for processing algorithms.
2x zoom - crop from the main camera:
The telephoto camera takes good photos in most situations, and in low light, the detail is almost unchanged:
The ultra-wide-angle photos lose a little in detail, but overall the quality is very good, including the night mode.
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro shoots video well, at 4K 60 FPS the picture is clear, the video does not shake, the stabilizer does its job well:
8K video is also generally of a nice quality. Very good detail, although the picture is no longer as smooth.
The ultra-wide-angle camera can shoot video in resolutions up to 4K 30 FPS. The quality is expectedly lower than the main camera. Not the best detail, the picture is a little shaky:
The maximum video resolution on a telephoto camera is FullHD 60 FPS. The quality is very mediocre:
Battery life
ASUS ROG Phone 9 Pro has a slightly larger battery with a capacity of 5800 mAh versus 5500 mAh in the previous model. The charging speed has not changed: the bundled power supply has a capacity of 65 watts. Power Delivery 3.0, Quick Charge 3.0, 5.0, and 15W wireless charging are supported. There is also support for 10W reverse charging. It takes about 50 minutes to fully charge.
Given the positioning of the smartphone, the battery life will depend heavily on the time spent playing mobile games and using AniMeVision. On the first day of testing, the smartphone was used quite actively, with benchmarks and games added to the usual activities such as calls, messengers, etc. I had to charge it late in the evening. With more moderate use, the smartphone can last a day and a half. In the battery test with 50% screen brightness, the smartphone lasted almost 13 hours.
