STACK #245 March 2025

TECH FEATURE

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The Snapdragon 8 Elite mobile chipset has been hotly anticipated, and won’t disappoint. Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 found in the 8, this new chipset sees a 45% performance boost to its CPU, and 40% boosts to its NPU and GPU. These can enhance game performance and visual fidelity significantly, but they also apply to functionality across the phone. The ROG Phone 9 also has many new AI features. When gaming, the X Capture 2.0 feature can detect and create videos of key events, so you can record your greatest victories easily. The AI Grabber 2.0 lets you perform custom searches based on in-game text – helpful if you're looking for guides – and the compatible translation feature can help to decipher in-game text. Plus, AI Call Translator can help you communicate across language divides, and the AI transcript feature gives you a full record of recorded conversations and voice notes.

The new ROG phone from Asus is here to once again elevate what's possible in mobile gaming. Words James O’Connor W hether you want to play visually rich games like Wuthering Waves at maximum fidelity, gain the upper ASUS ROG PHONE 9 The future of mobile gaming

Game on Once you jump into a game, you'll feel it pulsing from the device thanks to advanced haptic feedback. Games feel better to play with Asus’ AirTrigger controls – when you hold the phone in landscape mode and play, the top left and right essentially act as touch-sensitive triggers, giving you an extra degree of control. Picture perfect The AirTriggers can also be used as shutters for the phone's state-of-the-art cameras: a 50MP main camera, 5MP macro, 13MP ultrawide, and 32 MP front-facing – all of which capture beautiful, distortion-free shots. The 6-Axis Hybrid Gimbal Stabilizer 4.0 feature can keep your videos steady, too, preventing shaky shots.

hand in Honkai: Star Rail , or handle whatever the next few years of mobile gaming brings, the ROG Phone 9's incredible power and sleek design has you covered.

New AI features make gaming on the phone more intuitive, while a dramatic performance upgrade makes this the best ROG phone yet. The look

The Asus ROG Phone 9 5G 256GB is

available in black or white, while the ROG Phone 9 Pro 5G comes in black, with 512GB and 1TB options. Check online for availability.

The ROG 9 is stylish and more "grown up" than you might expect from a gaming phone, but still has the

improvements over the 8, including a larger 5,800mAh battery for up to 4.5 hours of

heavy gaming, an improved display refresh rate (185Hz), and a significant

flourishes synonymous with ROG. A mix of glossy and nano-textured matte finishes across the surface make it comfortable to hold – and it won’t attract fingerprints – while the 6.78-inch display is capable of up to 2500 nits of brightness. The "AniME Vision" programmable mini-LEDs on the back of the phone are a fun touch, letting you display short looping animations or your battery life. It also packs two USB Type-C ports – one at the bottom, one on the side – and a headphone jack – a feature missing from many of its competitors. What’s new? The ROG Phone 9 boasts numerous

power boost.

Beat the heat!

Add to your new ROG Phone 9 with these – literally – cool accessories (sold separately).

The ROG 9 Aeroactive Cooler X Pro cools things down when the gaming heats up, via a Thermoelectric AI Cooling system.

The ROG 9 Chill Case is a rear cover with a composite vapour chamber that reduces the temperature around the phone’s SoC by up to 17%.

34 MARCH 2025

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