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  • The ROG Gaming Phone.

  • You're not supposed to judge a book only by it's cover.

  • The same thing applies towards smartphones.

  • Today we'll be taking apart one of the most unique looking metal and glass combination

  • smartphones and reviewing it from the inside.

  • This teardown has been sponsored by Audible.

  • Let's get started.

  • [Intro]

  • The ROG Gaming Phone from Asus is actually a pretty over-engineered and complex phone

  • to disassemble.

  • The oddly shaped back glass panel makes things a bit more complicated, but it looks pretty

  • awesome.

  • Heat is, as always, our best friend while softening adhesive.

  • And a little persuasion from my razor blade and metal pry tools can help quite a bit.

  • Heating up the glass when the adhesive cools down and gets hard, and then shimmying my

  • razor blade around the edges to slice through the sticky stuff.

  • The weird metallic growth on the side of the phone makes for some pretty awkward angles,

  • but I still managed to get the glass off in one piece.

  • Lifting the rear glass upwards as to not put any pressure on the fingerprint scanner ribbon.

  • It's a little Lego style connector that's hidden under a tiny rubber pad.

  • I'll unsnap that connector and release the back glass.

  • After dealing with so many boring rectangle phones, it's nice to see something different.

  • Asus is definitely pushing the aesthetic limits of this smartphone design.

  • It stands out for sureespecially with the transparent light-up logo.

  • Before we get any farther, we have 13 normal Phillips head screws holding in the back plastics,

  • 11 of which are visible, and 2 of which are hidden under this...what should we call it...this

  • metal protrusion.

  • The thing is, it's not exactly metal, it's more of a thin shell about as thick as the

  • side walls of an aluminum pop canmeaning that it's really more for aesthetics than

  • anything else.

  • The three little black circles you see are vents leading directly down to the motherboard,

  • but the visible exterior copper portion is only for decoration.

  • I'll explain more in a second.

  • First, let's look at this white pad that fits underneath the transparent logo.

  • Remember I said the logo was really dim during the durability test?

  • That's because there is no back-lit lighting things up.

  • This is a piece of plastic.

  • So when light shines through it at an angle, like it did with my wall-mounted PC I built

  • a few years ago, it catches the logo in the plastic center and reflects out.

  • The 2 side LEDs shine at different angles to illuminate the whole piece of plastic.

  • It works, but it's still a far less bright method than the back-lit LED like we saw inside

  • the Razer Phone 2.

  • Let's take another look at the mid-plate.

  • The underside of the black plastic is hiding a pretty massive slab of solid copper.

  • It's not a vapor chamber.

  • Nor is it connected with the motherboard with any kind of thermal paste, but it is here,

  • existing.

  • And weirdly enough, surrounds the entirety of the circular vibrator motor.

  • You know, just in case that overheats.

  • The copper slab has nothing to do with the copper looking vents on the outside of the

  • phone though.

  • The thin copper vent things on the outside are just for decoration.

  • There is a layer of plastic between the slab of copper and the outer copper vents.

  • They're not connected.

  • You might be thinking to yourself, 'Hey Jerry, did you just break the whole phone?'

  • And nope, I did not.

  • The phone actually works just fine even without the copper plate or decorative exterior metal.

  • I mean, look at how good this Audible app is opening right now.

  • See what I did there?

  • Huge thanks to Audible for sponsoring this teardown.

  • The book I'm currently listening to is called Ender's Game.

  • It's a best selling classic about leadership while fighting space aliens...you know...the

  • good stuff.

  • Normal narration always seems a bit slow, so I bump it up a tiny bit and listen to Audible

  • while I'm driving or running outside.

  • Audible has something new called Originals.

  • Originals are content that's only found on Audible.

  • You can get your first audio book for free when you try audible for 30 days.

  • Visit audible.com/jerryrig or text the wordjerryrigto 500-500.

  • You get to keep your free book even if you decide to cancel.

  • Audible is an app I use quite a bit, so I'm glad I get to share it with you guys.

  • I'll get the phone turned back off.

  • You know, safety first.

  • We still have a lot of things to check out.

  • I'll unplug the battery and then find 3 silver Phillips head screws holding the rather massive

  • motherboard in place.

  • The board wraps around the entire edge of the phone.

  • I'll pop out the dual SIM card tray, and then start unclipping the little ribbon cables.

  • I found 8 of them before removing the large black sticker over the battery.

  • Unclipping that last ribbon cable for the screen and then the whole motherboard was

  • able to lift up and away from the phone body.

  • One tiny dollop of silver thermal paste connects the processor to the copper pad on the frame

  • below.

  • Supposedly this copper pad is connected to a vapor chamber, but it's hidden below the

  • rest of the frame or sandwiched under the screen.

  • So there's no way of telling how big it is.

  • The 2 side USB-C ports are builtin to the motherboard.

  • These are for connecting all the additional accessories like the external fan.

  • The rear facing camera is uncharacteristically secured to the frame of the phone with 3 screws.

  • Asus is rocking a 12 megapixel main lens with optical image stabilization.

  • Thumbs up for that.

  • And an 8 megapixel secondary wide-angle camera that fan fit more scenery into a shot but

  • does not have optical image stabilization.

  • The front facing camera is an 8 megapixel little guy with no OIS.

  • Fun fact though: the optical image stabilization is done with little magnets inside the camera's

  • metal housing.

  • You can see how it attracts my screw as I try putting it back together.

  • The bottom of the phone has one silver screw holding the loudspeaker in place.

  • It projects the sound forward and out of the front facing speaker grille.

  • It's got the gold contact pads on the back that communicate with the motherboard.

  • We also have a headphone jack with a super long ribbon cable tail that reaches underneath

  • the loudspeaker over to the motherboard.

  • The charging port is a cute little guy.

  • The USB-C with a rubber water resistant ring around the outside.

  • The ROG Phone has no official IP rating, but it's nice to see some steps were taken towards

  • keeping water out.

  • The little coin style vibrator motor is tucked in here next to the gold battery, which looks

  • like it has some pull tabs down at the bottom.

  • But they do break at first pull, and they are also unsatisfyingly silent during the

  • removal process.

  • The second pull tab snapped off...twice...resulting in a Pry of Shame to remove the rest of the

  • battery.

  • It's a rather large 4,000 milliamp hours.

  • We also get to see the ribbon cables for the air triggers on the side of the phone.

  • Asus says there's still a vapor chamber hidden in here somewhere, but it's impossible to

  • see without sacrificing the phone entirely.

  • I try to keep my phones in one piece.

  • If it does exist, it's glued between the screen and the underside of the frame, which also

  • means it's probably nothing in comparison to the size of the Razer Phone 2's water bed

  • style vapor chamber.

  • I got the headphone jack, the loudspeaker and charging port all situated back into the

  • frame.

  • Then comes the motherboard with it's blue wire cable.

  • The tricky part with a circuit board this big is lining up all the ribbon cables so

  • they don't get pinched underneath the board when I set it in place.

  • There are a lot of ribbon cables to plug back in, including the battery.

  • The little LED ribbon plug that lights up the back logo is a bit different.

  • That guy plugs in and gets latched down with a little plastic lever and some tape on top

  • to secure it.

  • Then the whole back plastic panel can plop in place with it's decorative copper.

  • The thin plastic strip to the left of the battery tucks between the buttons and the

  • battery itself to provide something for the power button to push against.

  • I'll get the 13 screws back into place, get the fingerprint scanner plugged in, and the

  • white plastic LED reflector positioned back in front of the LEDs.

  • And now it's time to see if the ROG Phone can handle being dissected and reassembled.

  • I imagine a teardown is rather stressful for these pocket computers.

  • Totally nailed it with that back metal cover.

  • You can hardly tell the phone's been opened up.

  • Everything still works, even the accessories.

  • Not too bad.

  • The ROG Gaming Phone is a feature-rich device, with all kinds of interesting perks and quirks.

  • I'm glad we got to review it from the inside.

  • It's a good one.

  • Don't forget to grab your free audio book with the link in the description.

  • Audible.com/jerryrig or text the wordjerryrigto 500-500.

  • j-e-r-r-y-r-i-g all lowercase.

  • I recommend Ender's Game.

  • Now that you've seen the insides of both gaming phones, which one do you prefer?

  • The Razer Phone 2, or the ROG?

  • Thanks a ton for watching.

  • I'll see you around.

The ROG Gaming Phone.

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