Preview of the “Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders” vs ROG5: Brand vs Original

Today we’re taking a look at a rather unusual device, ASUS ‘new “Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders”. The device was first announced a month ago by Qualcomm and ASUS, and represents a strange sort of collaboration between the two companies. The phone follows a Qualcomm push in social media and marketing to try and promote their Snapdragon brand, and a program called the Snapdragon Insiders initiative.

The “Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders” – a rather unintuitive name that we’ll abbreviate as SSI from now on, is odd in that it’s primarily driven by Qualcomm marketing, it’s actually a product designed and manufactured by ASUS. The initial announcement of the device was a bit confusing in that it looked like it was a phone developed by Qualcomm, but the relationship is rather a bit more fuzzy and complex. For now, you can think of the phone as just another ASUS device, with the Qualcomm Snapdragon branding.

For today’s review (which we’re calling a preview for now, more on that later), there’s one extremely notable parallel we can’t help but make, and that’s the comparison. with ASUS ‘own ROG Phone 5 that was announced and released earlier this year. As both devices are designed and manufactured by the same party, there will be extreme similarities between the phones – so comparing and contrasting them is inevitable in my eyes.

Disclosure: Qualcomm sent us a free review unit of the “Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders” for review. The review is an independent assessment of the product.

Big ASUS Phones
		ROG Phone 5		“Smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders”
SoC		Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 1x Cortex-X1 at 2.84 GHz 3x Cortex-A78 at 2.42 GHz 4x Cortex-A55 at 1.80 GHz Adreno 660 @ 840MHz
DRACHMA		8/16 GB LPDDR5		16 GB LPDDR5
Storage		128/256 GB UFS 3.1		512 GB UFS 3.1
Pin up		6.78 ” AMOLED 2448 x 1080 (20: 9) 144 Hz 240 Hz touch
Cut	Height	173.00 mm		173.15 mm
	Width	77.00 mm		77.25 mm
	Depth	9.90 mm		9.55 mm
Weight		239 grams		210 grams
Battery capacity		5770 type (2x 2885) 22.33Wh “6000mAh” design 65W load (PD3.0 / QC5.0)		“4000 mAh” 65W load (PD3.0 / QC5.0)
Wireless charging		–
Rear cameras
	Main	64MP IMX686 0.8 µm pixels (1.6 µm 4: 1 16MP) f / 1.8 OIS (SSI only) 26.6 mm eq.
	Telephoto	–		8MP 3x optical zoom f / 2.4 with OIS 80 mm eq.
	Large	12MP IMX363 1.4 µm pixels Double PDAF f / 2.2 14.3 mm eq.
	Additional	5MP macro		–
Front camera		24MP f / 2.45
I / O		Usb-c 3.5mm headset		Usb-c
Wireless (local)		802.11ax WiFi-6E Bluetooth 5.2 LE + NFC
Other characteristics		In-display fingerprint sensor		Rear fingerprint sensor Global 5G (sub-6 + mmWave)
Dual SIM		Double nanoSIM
Introductory price		(16/256 GB) $ 999		(16/512 GB) $ 1,499

Starting with the hardware, the SSI is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888 SoC. Qualcomm had noted that the phone did not contain the new Snapdragon 888+ as the phone was already in design and production before the S888 + was released, so they chose to use this platform for the device and avoid delaying it further.

What is a bit special about the Smartphone for Snapdragon insiders are some changes in the internal hardware. First of all, the phone is only available in one configuration, with 16GB of LPDDR5 and 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Usually, this is already one of the aspects that puts the phone at a higher price point compared to other devices, so it’s important to keep that in mind.

The other important aspect of the SSI is its compatibility with cellular networks and the design of the radio interface and the antenna: to keep it simple, this phone supports all 5G frequency bands in the world, including the Full support for mmWave which is unique to the phone. and cannot be found in any other device on the market. Generally, the inclusion of radio front-ends to support every frequency band for every cellular market in the world is a bit unusual as most vendors try to optimize the internal hardware of devices to just support the bands. frequencies available in the target market, and simply develop a few different models that target certain markets (North America, EMEA, “Global” models, China, Japan). In the case of the SSI, this is certainly a flexibility in terms of hardware capabilities – however, unless you are a highly international traveler and have suitable phone plans, it will be something for the very. vast majority of users will not be of practical benefit.

The phone has the same display and general form factor as the ROG Phone 5. The 6.78-inch AMOLED has a resolution of 2448 x 1080 and goes up to a refresh rate of 144Hz, as well as 240Hz touch input sampling rate.

As noted in our announcement article, it looks like the SSI’s front panel and entire front glass here looks the same as the ROG Phone 5.

When face to face, the only real distinguishing factor between the two devices is the fact that the SSI does not have a lower front speaker slot and instead uses a bottom trigger speaker. . What’s interesting here is that there’s still a glass cutout where the speaker slot is supposed to be, it’s just no use.

The form factor of the phones is mostly the same; However, the SSI is 0.4mm thinner and 29g lighter than the ROG Phone 5. The reason for the lower weight is a much smaller battery capacity – instead of the ROG 5’s giant 6000mAh, the SSI only has “only” 4000 mAh. That’s actually a 33% reduction – or to put it better, the ROG Phone 5 has a 50% larger battery. This will be quite worrying for the phone’s battery performance as we will see later.

The top of the SSI is virtually identical to the ROG Phone 5 with no difference along the glass face.

One design difference between the phones is that the ROG Phone 5 uses a chamfer under the plastic “gasket” along the display glass, while the SSI avoids this and just immediately starts the rounded metal frame of the phone. device.

The back of the phones is characterized by ASUS LED elements – this time it replaces the ROG logo with a 3D Snapdragon logo – it’s actually a three-dimensional element about 2mm deep under the rear glass panel and lights up.

The internal hardware designs of these phones have the motherboard PCB actually placed in the middle of the phone’s chassis horizontally – ASUS designed it with the Aero Cooler accessory in mind, as well as the USB-C port. secondary on the side of ROG phones. These accessories don’t exist for the SSI of course – placing the Snapdragon logo here is a bit odd in terms of the phone’s thermics, which we’ll get to later.

Also note on the back of the SSI the fact that there is a fingerprint sensor. This is Qualcomm’s latest ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, but the fact that it’s on the back of the phone feels a bit odd and generally counterintuitive when it comes to the technology of the sensor.

Qualcomm explains here that the phone uses a solid glass OLED substrate rather than the flexible OLED type, and this generally cheaper older type of panel is not compatible with Qualcomm’s ultrasonic fingerprint sensors. This is a bit of a tough situation for the SSI – on the one hand, it would have been odd that a Snapdragon-branded phone had to use an ordinary under-display optical fingerprint sensor from a regular vendor, but this implementation of the ultra-sonic Qualcomm The sensor is also generally a bit unnecessary and certainly not the best showcase for technology.

At the bottom of the phone, there are some pretty noticeable differences between the phones. We mentioned the bottom speaker – generally the implementation here isn’t as good as we have on the ROG Phone 5, and the sound isn’t as consistent. I’m not sure why it was necessary to change the layout.

What’s more, what’s missing on the SSI is the 3.5mm headphone jack. ASUS is one of the few hardware vendors that still provide the 3.5mm headphone jack in their phones these days and prides itself on this feature, which is good. The Snapdragon phone that loses it is rather odd, but generally in line with what we’ve seen from OEMs over the years, opting to promote wireless alternatives instead.

In terms of the camera setup, the SSI uses the same main and ultra-wide sensor as the ROG 5- but the main sensor gains OIS, and instead of a 5MP macro module we see the inclusion of a zoom. 8MP 3x optics – the same hardware that is included in the Zenfone 7 and Zenfone 8 Flip Pro models. What’s interesting here is that it seems that while the camera’s user interface is identical to that of other ASUS phones, Qualcomm took care of calibrating and optimizing the processing of the camera. camera for the device, which is one of the critical differences from other ASUS phones.

The smartphone for Snapdragon Insiders is pretty special in terms of wireless audio options – the phone comes with a pair of Snapdragon-branded ANC Master & Dynamic MW08 (MW08S in this case) headphones. The unbranded variant of these TWS actually has an MSRP of $ 299, so it’s actually a very substantial value proposition of the SSI’s $ 1,499 package.