In a market crowded with phone launches week after week, the ASUS Republic of Gamers series of smartphones stand alone, garnering much praise for the single-minded focus towards delivering a phone built ground-up for gamers. The ROG Phone 3 from last year did just that, appealing to the pro-gamer crowd at the risk of turning away folks who might have preferred a better camera here or a handier design there. Does this year’s successor, the ROG Phone 5, retain its core audience while winning over untapped mainstream customers?
There’s something distinctive and instantly recognizable about the design of the ROG Phone 5, even as the brand tones down the out-and-out gamer elements for a phone that you can pull out of a pocket in a meeting at work and not give advertise your gamertag. You still get the ROG labelling, the 8-bit-style dot-matrix ROG logo with programmable lighting…
