The ROG Phone 2 is here – Unbox and first impressions

Yay!!!! I waited for this day since long and wow has it been a wait. Nevertheless, the day has come, the phone is in my hands and I am ready to tell you about what to expect when you unbox this phone (beast apparently). Also,a disclaimer, there are lots and lots of videos and posts on the unboxing, reviews etc. I will try not to go deep into areas already covered.

Let me start this by saying that my daily driver is a S10e, and so I am used to a 5+ inch screen with an AMOLED display and an extreme frame rate in PubG. Yeah, I’ll delve into it later on. Just the first impressions for now.

The box is a regular cuboid with a tightly packed phone, case, and the charger with a type A to type C cable. Mind you. This is the cheaper version available on Flipkart, the 8GB/128GB one and Asus has made sure to skimp on everything, other than the phone. What you see with most YouTubers is NOT what you get. I guess the company had to do it to make the phone more affordable but I felt, meh. I would have shelved 2-3k INR more if I would have gotten better in-box contents. But that’s me. There isn’t even a sim card ejection tool, so yeah, cost saving.

The big phone is really big. It spans 6.6 inches corner to corner and it should be called a phablet. A gaming phablet. Not a phone. It will not fit in your pockets well, and there are no cases aplenty right now to safeguard its glass make. And yeah, even if you manage to find a bumper case with reasonable cushioning effect, I seriously doubt the pocket-ability. It is bitter sweet that you will need protection, and the case they provide isn’t that strong. Flimsy too while at it.

Now that my rant on the box and dimensions is over let us look at the phone more carefully. The device has two USB C ports, one 3.5 mm jack, one sim port with two sim cards support, a two camera setup, a dual tone LED flash, a front camera, a dual front speaker setup and a mostly glass body. Phew. That’s the externals. There is also an in-display fingerprint sensor, which is based on light and is not ultrasound. It differs slightly from other devices due to the two air-triggers on the side and the glowing logo at the back. Sneak-peek to my next post, the air-triggers are so awesome. The vibration and feedback……whoa, not going into too much. Let me save it for a dedicated gaming feedback post.

Starting the phone up now. The huge screen lights up with the ROG and DTS X inside logo. I was greeted by a nice vibration and sound, the first sound I liked after my old predator tab. Both of them are so good at their audio department but I’ll get to it later. There is the usual setup process after which you follow your backup restore transfer process. A few hours later, your device is all setup for use.

Before you go to buy this device, I suggest you to hold it in your hand in case you have access to it. The sheer size can be off-putting to some, not all. There is no good quality screenguard available at the time of this writing, if you are into it, and the device is a fingerprint magnet, as expected with a glass body. Get ready for some scratches unless you are careful. For now, I will game a bit more on it and give you some more inputs on how it really fares with the gaming experience. Hoping to give you much more in my review post.