Move aside Razer Phone, there’s a new mobile gaming machine in town. Xiaomi has just announced the Black Shark, its ultimate smartphone that’s designed for gamers.
On the exterior, the Black Shark gets a rugged look with green outlines that screams “Razer” all over. What’s even cooler is that it has a glowing logo on the back which illuminates depending on the situation.
It has a 5.99″ 18:9 display that pushes a Full HD+ resolution of 2160×1080. The screen has a brightness of 550 nits but there’s no mention of its refresh rate. As a comparison, the Razer Phone gets a 5.7″ Quad HD screen in a traditional 16:9 display aspect ratio that has a fluid 120Hz refresh rate.
Under the hood, it is powered by Qualcomm’s top of the line Snapdragon 845 processor clocked at 2.8GHz. It comes with up to 8GB of LPDDR4x RAM and it has up to 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage which isn’t expandable.
To keep things cool, it has a liquid cooling system which helps maintain maximum performance for a longer period of time without throttling. The Black Shark has an X-type antenna at the rear which is designed to minimise wireless interference no matter what way you hold the phone for gaming.
For a more immersive audio experience, it has dual speakers and there’s even a 3rd mic hidden in the earpiece for better audio pickup when you’re communicating with your mates. For an optimal gaming experience, there’s a dedicated green button to enter SHARK mode for maximum performance. There’s also a game dock which allows you to disable notifications and to optimise your gaming performance. The dock can be displayed by swiping down on the front mounted fingerprint sensor.
If that’s not enough, Xiaomi is currently bundling a Black Shark GamePad for pre-order customers. It connects via Bluetooth and it comes with its own 340mAh battery.
For taking pictures, the device comes with a 12MP f/1.75 + 20MP f/1.75 dual-camera setup that’s accompanied by a dual-LED flash. Over at the front, it gets a single 20MP f/2.2 selfie camera.
Juicing up the Black Shark is a 4,000mAh battery which supports Quick Charge 3.0 via USB-C. Unfortunately, like the Razer Phone, there’s no headphone jack. In terms of dimensions, the Black Shark is taller (161.6mm) and thicker (9.25mm) than the Razer Phone but it’s slightly lighter at 190g (Razer Phone: 197g).
The Black Shark is available only in China for now and the lower spec model with 6GB RAM and 64GB storage is priced at 2,999CNY (about RM1,850). Meanwhile, the top of the line model with 8GB RAM and 128GB storage is going for 3,499CNY (about RM2,159). Both variants come in Black, while the Silver version is only available on the higher spec model.
For more info, you can check out the product page on Mi’s website or visit the official Black Shark site.
