The Asus ROG Phone 6D series has a MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ processor and… a hood scoop?

Here in the SoyaCincau office, I’m one of the few who’s actually quite a fan of the Asus ROG Phone 6 which had launched back in July this year. It offered great performance, a large display and a huge battery—what’s not to like? Well, Asus seems to think that perhaps it’s the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 chip, and so they’ve now also launched the ROG Phone 6D series, with the ‘D’ here meaning Dimensity.

Asus ROG Phone 6D Ultimate specs

There’s going to be two versions of the ROG Phone 6D, the regular option and the ‘Ultimate’ one. Judging from how Asus has given this the ‘Ultimate’ moniker yet only giving the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1-powered version the ‘Pro’ moniker, there must be some major new features here right? Well, not exactly, but it does have one notable feature that the neither the ROG 6 nor the ROG 6 Pro has: the AeroActive Portal. It looks like a hood scoop on a car and acts like one too, allowing you to pop it open and together with the AeroActive Cooler 6 add-on will dissipate more heat, boosting thermal efficiency by up to 20%.

Apart from the new cooling vent, the ROG Phone 6D Ultimate also comes with the MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ under the hood of course, along with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM, which should be slightly faster than the LPDDR5 RAM on the ROG Phone 6 series. The Dimensity 9000+ is certainly no slouch, capable of meeting the same performance as the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 in various benchmark tests. You’ll also get 512GB of storage, and will come with Android 12 out of the box.

Elsewhere though, you’re going to be looking at what is essentially an ROG Phone 6 Pro. This means the same 6.78-inch, FHD+ AMOLED display with a 165Hz refresh rate, a 1ms response time and a Delta-E<1, along with a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass Victus over it for scratch resistance. You’ll also find the ROG Vision screen on the back which you can customise to show off various things such as the time, notification, incoming calls and current charging percentage. There’s also a 6,000mAh battery with 65W fast charging.

Other specs of note include a 50MP, f/1.9 main camera using the Sony IMX766 sensor flanked by a 13MP ultrawide camera and a 5MP macro lens, along with a 12MP front facing camera for selfies too. You’ll also get the symmetrical dual front-facing speakers with Hi-Res Audio, a tri-microphone setup and a 3.5mm audio jack. There’s support for 5G, NFC, WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 too, along with an under-display fingerprint sensor. The side of the device also has touch sensitive Air Triggers for gaming, along with gyroscoping aiming in games too.

The ROG Phone 6D Ultimate be available in just Space Gray, and being the ‘Ultimate’ ROG Phone this generation also means that it’ll come with the AeroActive Cooler 6 in the box. While no local pricing and availability details have been revealed for now, we do know that it’ll be slightly more expensive than the ROG Phone 6 Pro as it’s priced at EUR1,399 in Europe, where the ROG Phone 6 Pro was launched for EUR1,299 there. For comparison, the ROG Phone 6 Pro debuted in Malaysia with a RM4,999 price tag.

Asus ROG Phone 6D specs

As for the ROG Phone 6D, well, it’s the same story as before really. Just like the ROG Phone 6D Ultimate, it will come with the MediaTek Dimensity 9000+ system-on-chip under the hood, with either 12GB or 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM to pick from, along with 256GB of storage. It does not however have the AeroActive Portal vent on the side of the device, nor does it have the fancy second screen on the back of the device. Instead, similar to the regular ROG Phone 6, the ROG Phone 6D will have an RGB Asus ROG logo on the back.

The display is also the same as the ROG Phone 6D Ultimate and by extension, the ROG Phone 6 series too, meaning a 6.78-inch, FHD+ AMOLED display with a 165Hz refresh rate. The cameras meanwhile are also the exact same triple rear camera setup with a 50MP main camera, a 13MP ultrawide shooter and a 5MP macro lens along with the 12MP selfie camera. You’ll get the dual front facing speakers too, with a 3.5mm audio jack as well as the 6,000mAh battery with 65W fast charging.

The ROG Phone 6D will also be available in only Space Gray, and will likely be slightly cheaper than the regular ROG Phone 6 if and when it does launch in Malaysia. This is because in Europe at least, it has a starting price of EUR949, a smidge cheaper than the EUR999 the ROG Phone 6 goes for there. At the time being though, just like the ROG Phone 6D Ultimate, there’s no local pricing or availability details for now. Overall, it’s looking like it’s exactly the same as the ROG Phone 6 bar the new processor and slightly faster RAM, and should at the very least give users a choice between MediaTek or Qualcomm.