ASUS ROG Phone 6D Ultimate has an even more elaborate cooling system | gadget

After the launch of the ROG Phone 6 Pro gaming phone, some hardcore fans wondered what happened to the “Ultimate” variant. It turns out that ASUS waited more than two months before introducing its “one more thing”: the ROG Phone 6D Ultimate. It’s identical to the 6 Pro in almost every way, except for four things: the new “space gray” color, the interesting choice of MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ processor (which is what the “D” in “6D” stands for), the switch to faster LPDDR5X RAM and new “AeroActive Portal” design to blow cool air into its internal heat dissipation fins; I’ll abbreviate it as heat sink from here on.

The AeroActive Portal itself is essentially a door that opens when the included AeroActive Cooler 6 is attached, so that some of the cold wind produced by the fan, at almost 1000cc per second, is guided through a tunnel of wind and towards the heat sink. , with hot air coming out of the top slot. The heat sink, of course, is connected to the oversized thermal layers that cover the logic board and battery cells, to transfer heat from the components to the airflow. This is to help maintain a high frame rate for a longer period while gaming, as well as to ensure the phone remains comfortable to hold.

ASUS claimed that after 60 minutes of benchmarking Perfdog on Genshin Impact at 60 Hz in air-cooling mode, the ROG Phone 6D reached 36.9 °C (98.42 °F), 3.4 °C lower than the ROG Phone 6 in the same mode. It seems that the AeroActive Portal makes a noticeable difference. Likewise in “Frosty” and “Frozen” modes (with the Peltier thermoelectric cooling chip enabled), and it’s worth noting that the AeroActive Cooler 6 is the only Peltier-enabled cooler on the market that requires no additional external power. – You only need that for the most powerful “Frozen” mode.

Although the AeroActive Portal is only activated when an AeroActive Cooler 6 is connected, you can temporarily open it in the settings for cleaning purposes. Otherwise, the flap closes tightly to protect the phone’s IPX4 splash resistance. It also has fall detection to automatically retract the flipper, and the stepper motor along with the zirconium alloy hinge are apparently good for over 40,000 flips, both of which are based on learnings from the now-retired Flip Camera feature. Zenfone series.

The 6D Ultimate packs the same key feature set as the 6 Pro: 6.78-inch 165Hz AMOLED display, 720Hz touch sampling rate, up to 512GB storage, 6000mAh battery, 65W fast charging (42 minutes), Dirac-tuned head-up display, front-facing stereo speakers, ultrasonic “AirTiggers,” and a customizable “ROG Vision” color display on the back. It’s also the same set of cameras: a 50-megapixel main camera with Sony’s IMX766 sensor, a 13-megapixel ultra-wide camera plus a 5-megapixel macro camera; and on the front, there’s a 12-megapixel selfie camera with a Sony IMX663 sensor.

For the processor, ASUS made the surprise switch to MediaTek for its Dimensity 9000+ processor, which apparently scores slightly higher than the ROG Phone 6’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. The company added that while the chipset Snapdragon’s flagship packs a better GPU, Dimensity’s CPU is supposedly 10 percent more powerful (albeit with the same 3.2 GHz maximum clock speed), and this is more crucial for most mobile games. The CPU is also complemented by the faster LPDDR5X RAM, though this is the same reason it’s capped at 16GB instead of 18GB here.

The ROG Phone 6D Ultimate will be available across Europe very soon, with the single model (16GB RAM with 512GB storage) priced at €1,399 (around $1,400) or £1,199. Again, this premium model comes with an AeroActive Cooler 6. Also launching is the ROG Phone 6D, which is basically the ROG Phone 6, but instead packs MediaTek’s chipset and LPDDR5X RAM (also, it’s just an RGB logo instead of a ROG Vision display on the back and without the AeroActive Portal, of course). This starts from €949 (around $950) or £799 with the base model having 12GB of RAM plus 256GB of storage.