ASUS ROG Phone II Gets Ready To Rumble With Upgraded Snapdragon 855 Plus Processor

Hot on the heels of Qualcomm announcing an enhanced version of its mighty Snapdragon 855 system-on-chip (SoC) called the Snapdragon 855+, ASUS has confirmed that it will be implanting the new chip into its upcoming ROG Phone II. This will give the handset some additional grunt for gaming, compared to the regular Snapdragon 855 that is so commonly found in today's flagship phones.

In case you missed our previous coverage, the Snapdragon 855+ is basically a bolstered version of the non-plus variant. It is still an octa-core SoC with a main "Prime" core, three high performance cores, and four efficiency cores, and it continues to be built on a 7-nanometer manufacturing process.

However, the Prime core (Kryo 485) is clocked at 2.96GHz, up from 2.84GHz on the Snapdragon 855. That's around a 4.2 percent performance boost for single-threaded workloads. On the graphics side, Qualcomm is claiming a more significant 15 percent bump in performance. That means the Adreno 640 is likely clocked around 672MHz, up from 585MHz.

Qualcomm has essentially taken on the task of binning of the Snapdragon 855 for its new 855+ variant. You may recall that ASUS used specially binned Snapdragon 845 SoCs in its first (current) generation ROG Phone, which it then overclocked on its own. It is not clear if ASUS also plans to boost clocks even higher with the already bolstered Snapdragon 855+ in the ROG Phone II, but my guess is it will not.

"Full details and specifications of this exciting new gaming phone will be announced in the coming weeks, but the uprated power of the Snapdragon 855+ ensures that overall performance will take yet another leap forward," ASUS says.

ASUS has already confirmed that the ROG Phone II will sport a 120Hz display, up from 90Hz on the first-gen handset. That puts it on par with the Razer Phone (released in 2017) and Razer Phone 2 (released in 2018), in terms of the refresh rate.

Everything else regarding the actual hardware is speculation at this point. That said, it is a safe bet that the ROG Phone II will at least match the specs of first-gen handset, which wields 8GB of RAM and 128GB or 512GB of onboard storage, depending on the SKU.

The ROG Phone is rumored to launch on July 23.