Later, after flashing the correct firmware and watching the ROG eye spin back to life, he remembered the trick. It wasn't brute force. It was a rhythm. On the Asus ROG Phone 3, the passage to Fastboot is this:
To enter Fastboot mode on your ASUS ROG Phone 3 , you can use either a physical button combination or a computer-based command if you have access to ADB tools. Method 1: Hardware Button Combination
| Command | Function | | :--- | :--- | | fastboot devices | Checks if your PC sees the phone. | | fastboot flashing unlock | Unlocks the bootloader (wipes all data). | | fastboot flash recovery twrp.img | Installs a custom recovery. | | fastboot flash boot magisk_patched.img | Roots the device via patched boot image. | | fastboot getvar all | Displays all device information (useful for troubleshooting). | | fastboot oem device-info | Checks bootloader unlock status. |