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ASUS ROG Phone 9 FE: 'Affordable' Gaming Smartphone Unveiled With Last-Gen Snapdragon SoC

GGforever

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As smartphone SoCs continue to get more powerful every single cycle, there seems to be a plethora of gaming-oriented smartphones entering the market. The pricey ASUS ROG Phone 9 lineup is perhaps the most well known in this regard, powered by the impressively potent Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC. However, the smartphone is well outside most people's budgets, and ASUS seems to have taken note of that. The company has now unveiled a more affordable version, dubbed the ROG Phone 9 FE. However, the smartphone is only available in Thailand for now, commanding a price tag of $890.

On paper, it appears that the only difference between the ROG Phone 9, and the 9 FE is the chipset. While the pricier sibling utilizes the Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC, the FE has to make do with the substantially inferior Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. Apart from that, the ROG Phone 9 FE is almost identical to the vanilla Phone 9, sporting 12 GB of LPDDR5X memory, 256 GB storage, a 50 MP primary shooter, 13 MP wide-angle shooter, and a 5 MP macro camera. At the front, a 32 MP selfie camera sits above the 6.78-inch OLED display with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 and a maximum refresh rate of 165 Hz. In synthetic benchmarks, the Snapdragon 8 Elite leads the 8 Gen 3 by around 25-30% in CPU tests, and around 30-35% in GPU benchmarks, although it does consume more power, which is to be expected.



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"Gaming smartphones" are, in a sea of incredibly dumb consumer products, somehow the dumbest.
 
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"Gaming smartphones" are, in a sea of incredibly dumb consumer products, somehow the dumbest.
Mobile gaming is massive, and these phones tend to have much larger batteries then pedestrian phones so they end up dominating charts they are included in.

Just because you dont like something doesnt make it dumb.
 
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"Gaming smartphones" are, in a sea of incredibly dumb consumer products, somehow the dumbest.
Mobile gaming generate about 50% of all gaming revenue. Every day I use public transportation to commute (train just beats everything with 80-100mph in residential area) and see a lot of people casually playing puzzles, sudoku, jewel-like and other games. They doing so in times when no other gaming is feasible. Even for a handled like StemDeck you need more time and/or space then what you have on your average urban trainride.
 
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"Gaming smartphones" are, in a sea of incredibly dumb consumer products, somehow the dumbest.
Big slabs with big batteries, that hopefully don't heat up/get warm to the touch is what i understand/expect from that term. [But sacrifice Software Support & a closed Bootloader, at least on asus devices]
 
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"Gaming smartphones" are, in a sea of incredibly dumb consumer products, somehow the dumbest.
I like my gaming phone as a secondary phone. Big battery (7000mAh), latest Snapdragon Elite and a built in fan to keep it cool while gaming or charging.
Since mobile gaming is huge in my wife's community, it's a nice thing to have to play together.
 
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"Gaming smartphones" are, in a sea of incredibly dumb consumer products, somehow the dumbest.
Since everyone pretty much needs a smartphone nowadays, one optimized for gaming sounds like a no-brainer. If you attach joy-cons on either end, you pretty much have a handheld. A single gaming smartphone with joycons is cheaper than the total cost of most smartphones and handhelds added together.
 
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"AsSus...the way pocket bricks are made" hahaha :)
 
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An $890 phone is affordable? Although I guess $890 is nothing for those playing gacha MTX games.
 
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Why would anyone go this when they could get the OnePlus 13R for far cheaper with the same hardware. Well 120hz on 13R vs 165hz on the Asus 9 FE screen.
 
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