The ROG phone from ASUS is the most important gaming phone. It has the most powerful disk set in an Android phone, shoulder buttons, a continuous screen, an active cooling and RGB lighting. The ROG logo burning on the back has not changed in the three generations of ROG phones that ASUS has released, but it looks like the Taiwanese brand will shake things up with the next phone in the series: the ROG Phone 5. ( We do not know exactly what it will be called, but there is a chance that ASUS will not market it as the ROG phone 4, given the popularity of the biting belief of tetraphobia in countries in East Asia.
Earlier this month, ASUS published a preview on its Weibo page indicating that the next ROG phone will be launched. Given the ROG Phone 3 launched in July 2020, it looks like the launch of the ROG Phone 5 is taking place a little earlier than expected. A lot of devices are being released earlier than usual this year, so it’s not too surprising. Shortly after ASUS teased the ROG Phone 5, a photo and later a short practical video of the alleged device were posted to Weibo. The leaked image and video gave us a first look at the tiny, tiny secondary screen at the back. This small screen apparently supports game alerts and notifications for incoming calls.
Now, a list published on the Chinese certification website TENAA shows us the ROG Phone 5 in more detail. On the back we can see the number “05” (indicating that it is indeed the ROG phone “5”), “REPUBLIC OF GAMERS”, “EST. 2006” (the year the brand was founded), and “TENCENT GAMES.” ASUS has usually offered a customized version of its ROG smartphones in China in collaboration with Tencent Games, so we’ll probably look at the Tencent version of the device here, the Tencent model usually compromises on some internal hardware components to reduce costs, but the overall design should be similar to the international model.
We can also see at the back that the area is to the left below a dot matrix used for the Aura Lighting feature of the phone. The back cover submitted by TENAA shows that the ROG logo is illuminated, but the lighting can probably be adjusted in the phone’s software. The dot matrix design on the back of the ROG Phone 5 reminds me of the Lightning Armor case that ASUS offers for the ROG Phone 3.
Apart from the aforementioned changes to the rear design, we do not see many other design changes. The cameras look the same, the dual speakers on the front are still there, the selfie camera on the right is still there, the screen looks like it still has no notches or holes, and the ports still look the same . The cover of the SIM card slot has a neat red color, but we do not know if this is an exclusive design change for Tencent.
There is not much else known about the ROG Phone 5. According to the rest of the certification list (H / T @_the_technique), the device will have a 6.78-inch OLED screen, a dual-battery design (2x 3000 mAh batteries), Android 11 running and measuring 172,834 x 77,252 x 10.29 mm. A previous certification list revealed that the device can support 65W charging quickly wired. We expect it to have the flagship Snapdragon 888 from Qualcomm, enough RAM and storage and other hardware with the flagship.
The ROG Phone 3 was our favorite game phone of 2020. With competition from new entrants to the field like Lenovo and soon Redmi, the ROG Phone 5 will have to debut with exclusive gaming features that will justify the likely high price.