Samsung, no, sorry, Asus has released the ROG Phone 9 FE. After the name was spotted over the past few weeks, the mysterious Asus phone with a name like a Samsung phone has arrived in Thailand. At the time of writing, the phone is available in Asus’s online store in the country, but it does not appear in the U.S. or the U.K. stores.
The addition of the FE name — which has been linked to Samsung since the Galaxy Note 7 — isn’t the only odd nomenclature decision on Asus’s part. It’s called an ROG Phone 9, but the technical specification is closer to the ROG Phone 8 Pro than the brand’s latest model. Lets take a closer look.
A Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with 16GB of RAM provides the power, and not the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite found in the ROG Phone 9 Pro. Just like the ROG Phone 8 Pro it has a 6.78-inch AMOLED screen (ironically made by Samsung), a 5,500mAh battery with wired and wireless charging, stereo speakers, and the AniMe RGB display on the phone’s rear panel. There are no changes to the camera either, with a 50-megapixel main, a 13MP wide-angle, a 5MP macro camera, and a 32MP selfie camera.
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Surprisingly, the ROG Phone 9 FE sits alongside the ROG Phone 8 Pro in Asus’s Thailand store, but the old phone costs more to buy meaning few who compare the spec sheets will purchase the old model. Even the overall dimensions and weight are the same. The ROG Phone 9 FE is substantially cheaper than the latest ROG Phone 9 Pro and ROG Phone 9 Pro Edition models though, and once stock of the ROG Phone 8 Pro have gone, it’ll fill a gap in Asus’s product range.
However, it’s still an unusual decision to use the FE name when there are 24 other letters to choose from which aren’t connected with another brand’s devices. Whether the ROG Phone 9 FE will receive a wider launch remains to be seen.