The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 has been ditched for the Ultimate version
Earlier this summer, ASUS unveiled the ROG Phone 6 and ROG Phone 6 Pro, aimed squarely at serious gamers. The phones combine the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC’s processing muscle for demanding tasks, the flamboyant yet chunky design we associate with gamer-y phones, and some heavy duty thermal management. Both the phones are impressive, but ASUS isn’t done quite yet, and this week it’s teasing a ROG Phone 6D Ultimate, powered by MediaTek’s top-of-the-line Dimensity 9000+ chip.
ASUS shares a few abstract visuals for the upcoming ROG Phone 6D Ultimate, ahead of what sounds like a formal launch on September 19. The teaser doesn’t give much away about the features, specs, and design of the phone, but confirms that it will run the 4nm MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ chip announced this past June, an enhanced edition of the Dimensity 9000.
The Dimensity 9000+ chip uses an octa-core configuration including one 3.2GHz ARM Cortex X2 high performance core — faster than the same core on the Dimensity 9000 clocked at 3.05GHz. The new chip also has three Cortex A710 cores clocked at 2.85GHz, and four Cortex A510 high-efficiency cores clocked at 1.8GHz. An integrated ARM Mali G710 MC10 GPU manages graphics.
If the name is anything to go by, the ROG Phone 6D Ultimate could be a powerhouse, outdoing or at least matching the 6 and 6 Pro’s already incredible specifications, like a 165Hz FHD+ AMOLED display, 720Hz touch sampling rate, giant 6,000mAh battery with 65W fast charging support, an increasingly rare headphone jack, and ultrasonic AirTrigger buttons along the side. What about stuff like the tiny customizable OLED on the Pro model’s back? Right now, we really can’t say if the Ultimate’s hardware will more closely resemble the Pro or the base model 6.
All things considered, the ASUS ROG Phone 6D Ultimate’s performance should be very impressive, but we’ll have to actually lay hands on the hardware itself to learn if it can really hold its own against devices powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 SoC. This may end up all boiling down to ASUS’s software optimizations for heavy workloads and resource-intensive games. With not much likely to change on the design front, it will be interesting to see how ASUS differentiates the Ultimate model from the existing ROG Phone 6 series.
