Gadgetory

the rog gaming phone you're not supposed to judge a book only by its cover the same thing applies towards smartphones today will be taken 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 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 he it 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 just 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 has 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 let snap 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 sure especially 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 two 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 sidewalls of an aluminum top can meaning 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 backlit LED 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 two side LEDs shining at different angles to illuminate the whole piece of plastic it works but it's a far less bright method than the backlit LED like we saw inside the razor phone - 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 Vince 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 Vinh's 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 a 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 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 audiobook for free when you try audible for 30 days visit audible.com slash jerry-rigged or text the word jerry-rigged to 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 all unplug the battery and then find three 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 on clipping the little ribbon cables I found eight 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 two side USB seaports are built into 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 three 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 can 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 cameras 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 USB see with the 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 to your next the gold battery which looks like it has some pull tabs down at the bottom but they do break at first pull and are also unsatisfying ly silent during the removal process the second pull tab snapped off twice resulting in a prime 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 a su 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 is glued between the screen and the underside of the frame which also means it's probably nothing in comparison to the size of the razor phone two'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 its 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's 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 lashed 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 its decorative copper the thin plastic strip to the left of the battery tucked between the buttons and the battery itself to provide something for the power button to push against I'll get the 13 screws back in 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 reassemble 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 slash jerry-rigged or text the word jerry-rigged to 500 500 je r ry RI 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 razor phone 2 or the ROG thanks ton for watching I'll see you around