Asus ROG Phone finally lands in India with all its accessories in tow

Asus finally brought its flagship ROG Phone to the Indian market. The phone is priced at INR 69,999 ($1,002) and will be available exclusively on Flipkart starting today, November 29.

Asus is offering zero interest EMI option on the device, with a 12 month plan costing INR 5,833 per month. Flipkart will also be offering its Complete Mobile Protection plan for INR 999 instead of the usual INR 5,999. ASUS also has additional cashback offers for Reliance Jio customers.

Asus will also be releasing all the accessories for the ROG Phone over the coming days. This includes the Professional Dock (INR 5,499), GameVice (INR 5,999), TwinView Dock (INR 21,999), Desktop Dock (INR 12,999) and the ROG Phone Case (INR 2,499). The AeroActive cooler will be bundled with the phone for free.

Professional Dock • GameVice • TwinView Dock • Desktop Dock • ROG Phone Case

The ROG Phone is Asus' most capable smartphone with all the bells and whistles imaginable. It has a 6-inch, 2160x1080 AMOLED display with 90Hz refresh rate, making it the only high refresh rate smartphone in India. It runs on a binned version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 845, which is clocked at 2.96GHz, making it the fastest Snapdragon smartphone in the world. It includes 6GB of LPDDR4X memory and 128GB storage.

The ROG Phone has the company's AirTrigger feature, which uses ultrasonic touch sensors on the side that allow you to use them as shoulder buttons in game by mapping them to on-screen buttons. The phone also has dual USB-C ports, one on the side and one on the bottom, that allows you to plug in your charging cable on the side while you're playing. Only one of these supports fast charging, however, and you can't use both simultaneously.

The side port also allows you to plug in the bundled AeroActive cooler, a literal fan that sits on the back of the phone and cools it actively. The cooler includes a USB-C port and headphone jack at the bottom so you don't lose out on connectivity while using it.

The ROG Phone also includes Asus Aura RGB lighting on the back, which can be customized. The AeroActive Cooler also includes the same, which takes over when you plug in the accessory.

As impressive and comprehensive as the ROG Phone's feature list is, the high price makes it difficult to recommend. The cost of the accessories is especially prohibitive and pushes the total price into a territory few people would be comfortable with.

There is also an argument to be made of the need of a dedicated gaming phone, when cheaper devices with similar specifications can provide nearly the same experience despite not being marketed as a gaming phones. The quality of games on Android itself leaves a lot to be desired, as iOS still gets all the new games first and in some cases, exclusively.

Overall, undoubtedly a cool phone, but the price will certainly limit its reach.