We are two weeks into 2021 and we yet to hear about any official announcement for a gaming phone. While Black Shark and Nubia have already started teasing their next phones, they are likely to be limited to China for a while. Both phones are likely to launch as early as February in the country. Now ASUS has officially teased the arrival of its next gaming phone. The company is prepping to launch its next ROG Phone, which is likely to be called ROG Phone 5.

The latest development comes from Weibo, where ASUS’s account revealed that its upcoming gaming phone will offer an upgraded experience. That said, the company has not revealed the name of its next ROG phone in the new teaser. 

Recently, an ASUS phone with model number ASUS_I005DA was spotted on Geekbench 5. For the unaware, ROG Phone 3 has the model number ASUS_I003D. Hence, ASUS_I005DA is expected to be the model number of the next gaming phone, which is likely to be called ROG Phone 5. Interestingly, companies like OnePlus have also skipped the number ‘4’ from their lineup. It is said that the number ‘4’ is considered a bad omen in some Asian countries. Therefore, we could be looking at ROG Phone 5 moniker.

On Geekbench, the phone scored 1081 and 3584 points in single-core and multi-core tests respectively. It is powered by a Qualcomm chipset, which is codenamed Lahaina. This codename is associated with the latest and greatest Qualcomm processor, the Snapdragon 888. It is paired with 8GB of RAM and it is preloaded with Android 11 OS.

It must be noted that the ROG Phone 3 was launched in July 2020. It succeeded the ROG Phone 2 that was also launched in the month of July in 2019. Hence, we could be looking at a possible early launch for the next device. Companies like Samsung and OnePlus are tipped to launch their flagship earlier than usual in 2021, so it won’t be surprising if ASUS follows them too.