Xiaomi Black Shark Review – Best Gaming Phone

Xiaomi Black Shark Review

The idea to create a gaming smartphone arises regularly. And after the appearance of the Nintendo Switch and its unexpected popularity, it turned out that people have long wanted something like that. And manufacturers sprinkled on us their options – Razer Phone, Nubia Red Magic and of course Xiaomi Black Shark. And unlike Razer and Nubia, where they bet on the display, sound, and appearance, Black Shark thought about the main thing – system operation and control.

Xiaomi Black Shark Specifications

• Display: IPS LCD, 5.99 inches, 18: 9, resolution 2160 by 1080 pixels
• Dimensions and weight: 161.6 x 75.4 x 9.3 mm, 190 grams
• Processor: eight-core Qualcomm SDM845 Snapdragon 845 (4 × 2.8 GHz Kryo 385 Gold & 4 × 1.8 GHz Kryo 385 Silver), graphics chip Adreno 630
• Memory: 128 GB, 8 GB RAM or 64 GB, 6 GB RAM
• Camera: double main 12 megapixel (f / 1.8, 1.25µm) + 20 megapixel (f / 1.8, 1.0µm), frontal 20 megapixel (f / 2.2, 1.0µm)
• Battery: 4000 mAh
• OS: Android 8.0 (Oreo)

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Appearance

So, Black Shark looks like a dream of a severe gamer. But in fact, for some reason, all manufacturers think that gaming people need a bright, sometimes vulgar and some kind of cosmic appearance. If this is really so important, then we can say that Black Shark did it all. The front side looks quite casual – a display with an 18: 9 aspect ratio, a home button, and a rather tangible frame. But in the gaming device, framelessness is rather a minus than a plus. But the edges and back side of this smartphone immediately give him his gaming start.

Performance

Technically, the Black Shark gaming smartphone is not much different from conventional flagship smartphones: the Snapdragon 845 processor and the accompanying Adreno 630 graphics, 6 or 8 GB of RAM and 64 and 128 GB constant. But there are nuances. In Xiaomi Black Shark, the processor has the same eight Kryo cores as other smartphones, but four cores, if you believe the description, work here at 1.8 GHz, while all other smartphones at 1.7 GHz. But this is actually not an indicator, but the supposedly liquid cooling system sounds much more interesting. With this technology, Black Shark tried to solve the problem of throttling when overheating, and at peak loads, they managed to reduce the temperature by 8 ° C.

Gamepad

To make it easier to play, Black Shark sells a gamepad separately, which is attached to the smartphone on the left side and is connected to it via Bluetooth. True, before you connect the gamepad, you need to put on the smartphone a complete plastic bumper that partially covers the back of the device. This bumper will not protect either from falls or from anything else, but it is needed by and large in order to fasten this gamepad. Without a bumper to connect it will not work. An interesting approach, but it looks even stranger that the gamepad will be only on the left side, and your right hand will have to manage to press the screen.

It’s like trying to reinvent the bike, and in some games, it’s really more convenient to play that way, but in PUBG, GTA or Tanki you want your right hand to press physical buttons too. Black Shark didn’t even have to think of anything, it was enough to look at what Motorola, GameVice or a bunch of Chinese money companies did and at least do the same.

Display

But what everyone expected from Xiaomi Black Shark, but did not receive it – the display with a refresh rate of 120 Hz. Still, getting everything at once and preferably inexpensively is quite problematic. The screen in Black Shark IPS, 6-inch, with Full HD + resolution. The display itself is not bad, but its colors are clearly inverted when tilted. The screen goes a little red. Perhaps this is a problem of a specific instance, and perhaps this is a feature of the smartphone. The display is bright enough and it has good viewing angles, but what will unpleasantly surprise gamers is the lack of a mini-jack. In such a large and rather thick case there was no place for a headphone jack.

Autonomy and other features

But for which there is praise, so it is for the amount of built-in battery. The 4000 mAh battery also allows you to play normally and use the smartphone as usual without worrying about charging. The day of work with very active use Xiaomi Black Shark is going through easily. This is taking into account video, games, instant messengers and other applications. With active games, it takes from 15 to 25% of the charge in 30 minutes.

BlackShark supports dual SIM. The fingerprint scanner, located under the screen, is not the fastest and even slightly thoughtful, but it works. To the left and to the right of the Home button there are invisible hardware touch buttons Back and Call of the application manager.