Xiaomi Black Shark Gaming Handset Announced With 8GB Of RAM: Everything You Need To Know

Black Shark is a new Chinese company which managed to get under the spotlight because of Xiaomi’s investment. Xiaomi, one of the largest tech companies in China, invested an undisclosed amount of money into Black Shark, or in other words, in Black Shark’s gaming smartphone, which the company just announced in China. Black Shark is also aiming to release some accessories and e-sports smartphones in the future, and we’re guessing that most of their products in the coming months will be focused on the newly-announced handset. Having said that, the Black Shark gaming smartphone is more or less exactly what we’ve expected in terms of the design, as the phone leaked a number of times before it was announced. This device is meant to be a direct competitor to Nubia’s upcoming gaming handset, the Red Devil, which will be announced on April 19. That being said, let’s see what the Black Shark has to offer, shall we, starting with the phone’s spec sheet.

Black Shark Specs

The Black Shark Gaming handset is fueled by the Snapdragon 845 64-bit octa-core processor by Qualcomm, and in this case, that SoC is clocked at 2.8GHz. The Adreno 630 GPU is included on the SoC itself, as per usual, and in addition to this chip, Black Shark has included either 6GB or 8GB of RAM on the phone, depending on which variant you opt to get. Keep in mind that this is LPDDR4X RAM we’re looking at, in both cases, while UFS 2.1 flash storage is included. The 6GB RAM variant comes with 64GB of native storage, while the 8GB RAM model includes 128GB of internal storage. The phone’s display measures 5.99 inches, and this is a fullHD+ (2160 x 1080, 403PPI) panel. A 4,000mAh non-removable battery is included in this phone as well, it is not removable, and it supports Qualcomm’s Quick Charge 3.0 fast charging.

There are two cameras included on the back of the Black Shark gaming smartphone, 12-megapixel (1.25um pixel size, PDAF) and 20-megapixel (1.0um pixel size, PDAF) shooters. Both of those cameras feature an f/1.75 aperture, and in both cases, we’re looking at 6P lenses. A dual-LED, dual-tone flash is included on the back of the device as well, and the company says that the phone’s cameras sport something called “Dark Light Enhancement Technology”. A 20-megapixel snapper (1.0um pixel size, f/2.2 aperture) is included on the phone’s front side, and this is a 5P lens. This smartphone also includes what the company calls “a professional microphone”, while dual speakers are also a part of the package. There are two SIM card slots included in the Black Shark gaming smartphone, two nano SIM card slots, while the phone supports the following LTE bands: FDD-LTE – band B1/B3/B4/B5/B7/B8/B12 ; TD-LTE – B34/B38/B39/B40/B41. The device features a front-facing fingerprint scanner, while it measures 161.6 x 75.4 x 9.35mm, and weighs 190 grams.

Black Shark Design

The Black Shark gaming smartphone is made out of metal, we’re looking at a metal unibody design here. The phone sports a rather unusual design, at least when you look at it from the back, as its back side is designed to offer more grip than regular metal-made smartphones. On most smartphones, the back side is smooth all over, well, Black Shark has decided to mix things up a bit, and play around with the back side of its first smartphone, so the design of the sides on its back differs from the center part, same goes for the top and bottom parts of its back. Black Shark’s logo is included on the back of the phone, and it’s easily noticeable, as it’s green-colored. The phone features a fingerprint scanner on its front side, and the device itself does not exactly sport thick bezels, but they’re not that thin either. The phone’s power / lock, volume up and volume down keys are included on the right, while one physical key sits on the left-hand side of the device as well, and it’s called the ‘SHARK’ key. This button essentially activates high-performance mode for gaming, at least that’s what we were able to gather based on the provided info. Next to the home button / fingerprint scanner, you will find two capacitive keys, back, and multitasking buttons, as the device does not use on-screen navigation keys. It is also worth noting that Black Shark included an “X-Type smart antenna” on the back of this phone, in order to make sure your signal is great no matter how you hold the device. Another thing worth noting, is the fact that this phone ships with liquid cooling, which should help keep the internals of the phone, mainly its SoC, cool at all times. The phone comes in Polar Night and Sky Gray color variants.