Asus ROG Phone 3 and Zenfone 7 - Qualcomm SD865 SoC confirmed

by Mark Tyson on 26 February 2020, 11:21

Tags: Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), ASUSTeK (TPE:2357)

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Qualcomm first shared official details about its Snapdragon 865 5G Mobile Platform last December. The offering from Qualcomm pairs the SD865 SoC with a discrete Snapdragon X55 Modem-RF System to provide 5G connectivity - Qualcomm won't provide an option to split this pairing to ensure premium connectivity to its top-end processor. You can read our launch date article for more details of the SD865's performance, and flick through the official product pages for Qualcomm's full specs.

HEXUS recently reported on the launch of the Galaxy S20, S20+ and S20 Ultra, which comes packing the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 5G Mobile Platform, depending on the region variant (in the UK it features the octa-core Samsung Exynos 990 SoC instead). A lot of other flagship phones, some yet to be announced will come featuring Qualcomm's latest and greatest, and you might be wondering what they are.

Qualcomm has just announced that the following devices will come with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 5G Mobile Platform inside, to power the first wave of 2020 5G smartphones:

  • Black Shark 3
  • FCNT arrows 5G
  • iQOO 3
  • Legion Gaming Phone
  • Nubia Red Magic 5G
  • OPPO Find X2
  • Realme X50 Pro
  • Redmi K30 Pro
  • ROG Phone 3
  • Samsung Galaxy S20, S20+, and S20 Ultra
  • Sharp Aquos R5G
  • Sony Xperia 1 II
  • vivo APEX 2020 Concept Phone
  • Xiaomi Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro
  • ZenFone 7
  • ZTE Axon 10s Pro

All but the Samsung Galaxy models will also feature Qualcomm's FastConnect 6800 mobile connectivity subsystem which implements several Wi-Fi 6 technologies, such as target wake time, 8×8 MU-MIMO, and WPA3 - as well as Bluetooth 5.1 support. There are more than 70 designs in development using the SD865 according to Qualcomm's latest data.

Asus hasn't started its ROG Phone 3 or Zenfone 7 PR engines yet, so it is interesting to see a key spec of these upcoming flagships confirmed by a third party component maker. MWC 2020 was actually supposed to be taking place right now (ending tomorrow) so there must be quite a few major smartphone announcements due, including some from Asus. Incidentally, XDA reports that the Asus ROG Phone 3 will come pre-loaded with Google Stadia. Other hot-tipped features of the ROG Phone 3 are a big 120Hz display and 6,000mAh battery.

Other gaming phone designs in the list above include the Black Shark 3, Lenovo Legion Gaming Phone, and possibly some others I am unfamiliar with.

HEXUS Forums :: 5 Comments

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Posted by Maboof - Wed 26 Feb 2020 16:06
The sony phone looks pretty sweet… It's more a professional accessory, however it's also compatible with a dualshock controller and a bunch of other things.. I'd be interested to see how good the camera is in comparison to the pixel 4!
Posted by Ozaron - Wed 26 Feb 2020 18:30
I waited like 3-5 months to buy an upgrade phone last year and all of those months were after Zenfone 6 release. By the time I bought what I did, Zenfone 6 still wasn't available to buy.
Posted by philehidiot - Thu 27 Feb 2020 13:55
Maboof
The sony phone looks pretty sweet… It's more a professional accessory, however it's also compatible with a dualshock controller and a bunch of other things.. I'd be interested to see how good the camera is in comparison to the pixel 4!

Sony's cameras are almost always terrible in comparison to the competition. Which is hilarious when you consider they supply most of the hardware…. they just don't seem to be able to get the processing right. The continued use of a 4K screen is utter madness, even on the professional phone to be used as a second screen for cameras. I'm really not sure why you'd use your phone for this. Broadcast people tend to use their phones for reference and so on, which is difficult when it's plugged into a camera. Also, I wouldn't trust it to not go missing. I'd rather that they steal a secondary monitor leased from Gearhouse rather than my own property. Seems very, very strange as a marketing ploy.

What I can say about Sony is that bringing back the 3.5mm jack on the back of customer backlash is a sound move, but one you have to make when you're the underdog… you can't afford to alienate what few customers you have.

The screen throwing battery life away with 4K res which is proven to be no gain over 1440 in practice, a likely interpolated 90Hz mode rather than true 90Hz and the likely awesome camera hardware but terrible software will probably render this phone another expensive “don't buy”. Which is a shame as Sony has everything it needs in house to make an awesome phone, it just needs a Lisa Su to get the organisation in shape and execute a decent product.

I really do hope I'm wrong as I'd love a decent Sony phone again. The last Sony I had was the J6 which was brilliant. After that they merged with Ericsson and their P990i was brilliant also. I had an Xperia pro which had a slide out keyboard which was good-ish but no cigar. By that point HTC was playing a blinder with their mid range phones and Samsung was just starting to produce some game changers.
Posted by chj - Fri 28 Feb 2020 07:41
philehidiot
Maboof
The sony phone looks pretty sweet… It's more a professional accessory, however it's also compatible with a dualshock controller and a bunch of other things.. I'd be interested to see how good the camera is in comparison to the pixel 4!

Sony's cameras are almost always terrible in comparison to the competition. Which is hilarious when you consider they supply most of the hardware…. they just don't seem to be able to get the processing right. The continued use of a 4K screen is utter madness, even on the professional phone to be used as a second screen for cameras. I'm really not sure why you'd use your phone for this. Broadcast people tend to use their phones for reference and so on, which is difficult when it's plugged into a camera. Also, I wouldn't trust it to not go missing. I'd rather that they steal a secondary monitor leased from Gearhouse rather than my own property. Seems very, very strange as a marketing ploy.

What I can say about Sony is that bringing back the 3.5mm jack on the back of customer backlash is a sound move, but one you have to make when you're the underdog… you can't afford to alienate what few customers you have.

The screen throwing battery life away with 4K res which is proven to be no gain over 1440 in practice, a likely interpolated 90Hz mode rather than true 90Hz and the likely awesome camera hardware but terrible software will probably render this phone another expensive “don't buy”. Which is a shame as Sony has everything it needs in house to make an awesome phone, it just needs a Lisa Su to get the organisation in shape and execute a decent product.

I really do hope I'm wrong as I'd love a decent Sony phone again. The last Sony I had was the J6 which was brilliant. After that they merged with Ericsson and their P990i was brilliant also. I had an Xperia pro which had a slide out keyboard which was good-ish but no cigar. By that point HTC was playing a blinder with their mid range phones and Samsung was just starting to produce some game changers.

Pretty much hit the nail on the head, the ingredients are there but the finished product just doesn't excel. One thing i miss from having a Sony phone is their music app; it's the best music app I've used so far and I still download the APK to use on my P30 (until android 10 came along and broke it…)
Posted by zenfortech - Fri 24 Jul 2020 03:45
Asus Rog Phone 3 chip 865 plus