What you need to know
- ASUS' ROG Phone II went up for pre-order in China earlier this week.
- The Tencent Games Edition — which costs just $510 — racked up 2 million pre-orders in just 24 hours.
- The standard edition of the phone retails for the equivalent of $875.
ASUS' ROG Phone II is a serious piece of kit. It is the first phone to be powered by the Snapdragon 855+, and the first from the Taiwanese manufacturer to offer a 120Hz display.
The phone made its debut in China at the end of last week, and is set to retail in the market for just 3,499 Yuan ($510). That's for the Tencent Games Edition that comes with a whole lot of Tencent apps and services, however, with the standard bloat-free edition with 12GB of RAM and 128GB of storage setting customers back 6,000 Yuan ($875).
ASUS ROG Phone II preview: Changing the rules of the game
The low price of the base variant combined with the hardware on offer has allowed ASUS to rack up 2 million pre-orders for the Tencent Games Edition on JD.com. ASUS noted that the figure is a new pre-order record for gaming phones on the e-commerce platform, and at that price, it isn't hard to see why.
ASUS will bring the ROG Phone II to global markets in the month of September, which is when we'll know more about pricing and availability outside of China. It'll likely be closer to the $900 figure of the first-gen model.
Review: 4 months later, the Nest Audio is still a smart speaker champ
About four months after its release, the Google Nest Audio is still standing strong as one of the best smart speakers currently available. If you haven't picked one up yet, now's a great time to do so.
Why don't we see any more pop-up selfie cameras?
Pop-up selfie cameras defined 2019 phones, but the trend fizzled out shortly thereafter. Here's why you don't see many phones with pop-up selfie cameras anymore.
Jetpack Compose will breathe new life into tablet and big-screen apps
Tired of apps looking really bad and sometimes not working on your big screen devices? This new tool from Google can help developers fix things!
Dropping the Note 20 Ultra would be a disaster. Protect it with a case!
Whether you prefer a heavy-duty case or a thin and shiny one that catches the light just right, there's a great Note 20 Ultra case out there for everyone.