Asus ROG Phone 9 Revealed with Snapdragon 8 Elite Chip, Arrives Nov. 19

Asus is announcing its ROG Phone 9 gaming phone line Monday as part of this week’s Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, teasing that the phone will officially launch on Nov. 19.

The gaming phone line is traditionally one of the first to receive Qualcomm’s latest processors, with Asus confirming that the ROG Phone 9 will be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform that also debuted Monday. This processor will likely power the next year’s worth of flagship Android phones; the prior Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, for example, is included in the Samsung Galaxy S24 series and the OnePlus 12.

The Asus announcement also provided a look at one of the ROG Phone 9 models, featuring the LED lights that are typically on the back of the gaming phone line. The announcement also included an “AI on, game on” tagline, which will likely point towards the continuation of artificial intelligence features being used to enhance gaming. 

When I reviewed the prior Asus ROG Phone 8 Pro, I appreciated the company’s lighter touch on artificial intelligence by focusing on text recognition within games and noise cancellation for phone calls. But with newer AI features popping up since then like Google’s Circle to Search — which I am increasingly finding useful for gaming by circling sections onscreen to find help towards completing more challenging tasks — we might see the next Asus phone incorporate more of these ideas when we get closer to its launch.