Asus doesn’t make as many phones as it used to, but the Taiwanese manufacturer has established itself in two notable areas in the smartphone world: gaming phones and compact flagships. While the Zenfone 9 is the brand’s mainstream flagship phone focused on one-handed usability, the ROG Phone 6 lineup remains the benchmark in the gaming phone segment. Let’s see if we can.
Winner – Zenfone 9
Asus has made one of the best compact phones this year, but it falls far short. Zenfone 9’s size is perfect for one-handed operation without sacrificing performance or build quality. The Zenfone 9 ticks all the checkmarks for the 2022 flagship, with a 120Hz AMOLED display, a Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chipset and a significantly improved main camera compared to its predecessor.
Add in a clean design that sets it apart from other phones on the market, and battery endurance that outperforms other similarly sized phones, and you’ve got yourself a true winner. , has also appeared in some of the top 5 phones in our editors’ annual rankings.
Winner – ROG Phone 6 Pro/6D Series
It’s hard to find fault with the ROG Phone 6 Pro and ROG Phone 6D series. These are the pinnacle of gaming phones for 2022. Asus offers a complete gaming phone package and this year brought his two best flagship chipsets available in the Android realm – Qualcomm’s. Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 on ROG Phone 6 and 6 Pro, and MediaTek’s Dimensity 9000+ on ROG Phone 6D series.
The 10-bit AMOLED screen with a 165Hz refresh rate is a real pleasure to use, as is the AirTigger 6 ultrasonic touch sensor, class-leading stereo speakers, and battery life. The ROG Phone 6 Pro can be configured with up to 18GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, and Asus offers an extensive list of first-party accessories that are unrivaled in this segment.
The special effort put into the thermal management of the last few generations of demanding Snapdragon chips and the numerous user customization options stand out in today’s ROG Phone lineup. If there’s one improvement to the next-gen ROG Phone, it has to be the camera.
Loser – Timely Software Updates
Google announced Android 13 in August with Asus. four To make matters worse, the latest ROG Phone 6D series and ROG Phone 6 Diablo Immortal Edition launched with Android 12 in the fall of 2022.
The official Asus Android 13 update schedule calls for ROG Phone 6 series for Android 13 in Q1 2023, but no specific date has been set yet. This doesn’t appeal to anyone buying his top-spec ROG Phone 6 Pro or 6D Ultimate at prices above $1,200/€1,200.
To make matters worse, Asus offers only two Android version updates and two years of security patches compared to Samsung, Google, OnePlus, and Oppo devices, which have four. Given the high asking price and relatively few new devices, we’d love to see longer software support on flagship Asus phones in the years to come.
Loser – Non-ROG Big Screen Flagship
The Zenfone 9 is a great phone with a flagship build and specs, but the market wants a phone with a big screen, so why not give up and make one? Yes, the ROG Phone is a flagship too. But the gamer-wide aesthetic and subpar camera don’t sit well with consumers who want a sleek flagship to rival the world’s Samsung Galaxy and iPhone.
Asus has been using the Zenfone Flip model for the past few years, but it didn’t do well in terms of sales and was discontinued. Asus makes some of the best but often undervalued phones on the market, so hopefully we’ll see multiple entries in the Zenfone lineup next year.