Asus will finally let you pre-order the ROG gaming phone on 18 October for $899

Asus showed off the ROG phone , it’s gaming oriented Android smartphone, back at Computex 2018 in June. The Taiwanese giant, better known for its PC components, has finally announced the release date of the phone. The gaming phone will go on pre-order on 18 October in the US and starts at a price of $899 for the base variant with 128 GB of storage. The top-end model with 512 GB of storage costs $1,099. Accessories will also be available later this year, but there is no specific date out yet. [caption id=“attachment_5361681” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”] Asus ROG gaming phone paired with a TwinView Dock. Image: Asus[/caption] Now, we’ve seen a number of gaming smartphones over the span of a year — the Razer phone, the Xiaomi Black Shark , the Nubia Red Magic and now even the Razer Phone 2 . However, what sets the ROG phone apart from all the other gaming smartphones are the dock options that Asus has in store for the phone. Asus offers as many as six dedicated accessories for the ROG phone. This begins with a choice of docks and also includes a controller and a case. The docks are definitely all the rage though. The Mobile Desktop Dock, for example, costs $230 and allows you to hook the phone up to an external 4K monitor, mouse and keyboard. The TwinView Dock, on the other hand, lets you add a second screen to the phone and that will set you back by $400. There also a WiGig dock on offer for $330 which turns the ROG Phone into a portable gaming console that you can hook up to your TV, with a physical controller in the Gamevice. A controller for the WiGig will cost you an additional $90. You can also get the Asus Professional Dock for $200 which will allow you to connect the ROG Phone to a TV or monitor using a Gigabit Ethernet port. Coming now to the specs, the phone is powered by a special Snapdragon 845 SoC which has custom Kryo cores clocked to a whopping 2.9 GHz to provide seamless gaming. There is also a vapour chamber cooling system inside the phone, the likes of which was seen on the Black Shark. [caption id=“attachment_5361631” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Asus ROG phone connected to the Mobile Desktop Dock. Image: Asus[/caption] On top of that, Asus will also be bundling a retroactive cooler in the box which will provide an additional type-C port bringing the grand total of type-C ports to three. The ROG Phone has a 6-inch 2,160 x 1,080 AMOLED display and if that single display is not enough for you, then Asus has provided another attachment called the TwinView Dock. As the name suggests this is a handheld grip which has an extra screen and its own battery and it can be attached to the ROG phone giving a Nintendo DS-like experience. Powering the phone is a 4,000 mAh battery, which supports ASUS HyperCharge, preventing the phone from heating during charging. The phone also makes use of Quick Charge 4.0, which reportedly charges the phone up from 0-66 percent in 30 minutes. There are a pair of front-facing dual-speakers and in terms of optics, the phone has an 8 MP front camera along with 12MP + 8MP ultra-wide on the back. There is also a fingerprint reader on the back.