Xiaomi today made official its first gaming smartphone under its new brand, “Black Shark”. The phone, which itself is called Black Shark marked the company’s new devotion into creating something compact yet powerful to handle intensive game play without any compromise. The phone hardware are tuned in this manner to provide the best gaming experience.
Unlike several other flagships in the market, the Black Shark is built from the scratch for gaming. The hardware and software that govern the phone ecosystem are made with gaming in mind too. Powering the device is Qualcomm’s most powerful processor, Snapdragon 845 with Adreno 630 embedded, while there is up to 8GB of RAM onboard to make games run as smooth as possible. The gaming device lacked external storage supports which is kind of disappointing, but the 64GB internal storage should serve you well. Moreover, there’s a 128GB storage model with an heftier price tag.
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The whole platform is built on Android mobile operating system, Android 8.0 Oreo to be precise, but Black Shark (or should we say Xiaomi) has its own custom UI layed on top to further customize settings and provide more options that will benefit gamers. One of these is a dedicated “Shark” button on the phone side that when pressed will focus the entire processor cores and available software resources to the current game to boost performance while limiting background process. There is also a dedicated image processing chip that enhances the displayed image and provide richer graphics details.
To further improve gameplay, the Black Shark has a liquid cooling system built under the rear panel to minimize the CPU core heat that may leads to throttling. According to Xiaomi, the cooling system can lower the temperature by up to 8-degree. The Black Shark have nearly all the specs that you could expect on a flagship, an 18:9 5.99-inch Full HD+ display, 12MP+20MP dual rear camera, 20MP front camera, fingerprint sensor and other usable specs/features. The only down-spec is the removal of 3.5mm audio jack as audio is delivered through the USB-C port.
There are no dedicated hardware buttons, but Xiaomi does provide an alternative that will serve nearly much as a joystick. Alongside with the device, the company also launched a gamepad that can be attached to the phone side for manual game control. The gamepad uses Bluetooth 4.0 to establish a connection and it comes with its own 340mAh battery to keep it running.
Black Shark Specifications
- 5.99-inch display with FHD+ (2160×1080) resolution, 18:9 aspect ratio, DCI-P3 color gamut, 550 nits brightness
- 64-bit 2.8GHz octa-core Snapdragon 845 Mobile Platform, Adreno 630 GPU
- 6GB / 8GB LPDDR4x RAM
- 64GB / 128GB built-in storage (non-expandable)
- 12-megapixel rear camera, f/1.75 aperture, 1.25µm pixel, dual-tone LED flash; secondary 20-megapixel rear camera, f/1.75 aperture, 1µm pixel
- 20-megapixel front-facing camera, f/2.2 aperture
- OS: Android 8.1 Oreo, JOY UI
- Fingerprint sensor
- Dual SIM
- Hi-Fi audio
- Connectivity: WiFi 80211ac (dual band + 2×2 MU-MIMO), Bluetooth 5.0, 4G VoLTE, GPS/A-GPS, GLONASS/Beiduo, NFC, USB Type-C
- Battery: 3900mAh (minimum) / 4000mAh (typical), Qualcomm Quick Charge 3.0
- Dimensions: 161.6 × 75.4 x 9.25mm
- Weight: 190 grams
- Color(s): Sky Gray, Polar Night Black
The 6GB RAM+64GB storage model is priced at CNY 2999 ($477), while 8GB RAM+128GB storage model costs CNY 3499 ($557). The gamepad will be available separately for CNY 179 ($28). Pre-order begins today and it will start shipping from April 20th.
