As gamers probably know all too well, you can’t ever have the best piece of hardware for more than a few months – something better comes along sooner rather than later. So, say “hello” to the new S-series of the Asus ROG Phone 5 that comes to succeed the original line, which launched in April of this year. The new series upgrades to the Snapdragon 888+ chipset with a 3.0 GHz prime core (Cortex-X1), up from 2.84 GHz on the original chip. The AI Engine got a 20% boost and now delivers 32 TOPS (up from 26 TOPS). The chipset is not the only upgrade on the new models, but we’ll get to that. First, let’s meet the two newcomers. Yes, two. The Asus ROG Phone 5s and ROG Phone 5s Pro. There is no Ultimate version this time around, but the Pro was upgraded to 18 GB of RAM (LPDDR5) and 512 GB of storage (UFS 3.1), which were the main draws of the Ultimate model in the first place. The new Pro model gets to keep the color PMOLED display on the back too (the Ultimate had a monochrome display). If 18/512 GB sounds like overkill, there are multiple configurations of the Asus ROG Phone 5s. They start at 8/128 GB, move through 12/256 GB and top out with the 16/256 GB configuration. Neither model has a microSD slot, but they do support NTFS-formatted external USB drives. As before, there’s no display on the back of the vanilla model, just an RGB-backlit Republic of Gamers logo. Also, the Pro model has two touch sensors on the back (which can be used as game controls). The vanilla phone still gets the ultrasonic AirTrigger 5 shoulder buttons, however.
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