Xiaomi’s sub-brand Black Shark launched their first smartphone last year. It played an important role to encourage the category of gaming smartphones all around the globe. Now it’s time for a successor, and after a couple of leaks the Black Shark 2 got unveiled. There are some specification wise improvements as well as gaming improvements. So let’s have a look at Black Shark 2.
Design:
Speaking about the design and all the gaming elements it has, the Liquid Cool 3.0 vapor chamber wipes out all the heat inside the device, which keeps the device cool and frame rates stable during the gameplay. The company promises 14 lower temperature with this cooling system. Also the inbuilt gaming software helps a smoother and efficient gameplay with its AI capabilities. There is also a case that has inbuilt fan to cool down the device in hotter surrounding, but the case sells separately. There are some LED lights embedded at the back and sides as well.
One thing, which I don’t like about this design, is the port selection and placement. First is the absence of 3.5mm headphone jack. Second thing is placement of Type-C port. The Type-C port is placed at the bottom part, which can be annoyed while played game and charging the device simultaneously. The GamePad 3.0 accessory, which turns the phone into a console, completely blocks the Type-C port. So user can’t charge the phone during gameplay. In this department Asus ROG Phone has better gamepad accessory, keeping the 3.5mm jack with the device.
Specifications:
Coming to the specifications, this Black Shark 2 sports a 6.39-inch AMOLED display with Full HD+ resolution and 430 nits of brightness. This display is HDR enabled, has DCI-P3 color space, touch latency of 43.5ms, pressure sensitivity, and interpolation mode that gives higher frame rates despite having a 60hz display. As it’s a gaming smartphone of 2019, it comes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 octa core processor clocked at 2.41Ghz, along with Adreno 640 GPU. It has 6/8GB RAM with 128/256GB internal storage respectively, along with a 12+256GB variant.
The rear camera on this device has a dual camera setup, with a primary 48MP Samsung sensor that takes photos at 12MP resolution with pixel binning. It has an f/1.8 aperture and 0.8µm pixel size. The secondary camera is a 12MP telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom, f/2.2 aperture, and 1.0µm pixel size. On the front there is a 20MP shooter with f2.0 lens and 0.9µm pixel size.
This Black Shark 2 comes with Android 9.0 Pie out of the box with Black Shark’s custom UI on top. Apart from their gaming software module and LED indicators management app, this is a very close to stock UI. It packs in a 4000mAh battery with 27W fast charging support. It has stereo speakers at the front for good sound experience. For security it has AI based face unlock and an in-display optical fingerprint sensor. For connectivity it has 4G, dual band Wi-Fi 802.11, Bluetooth 5.0, GPS, and Type-C port. It comes with Shadow Black and Frozen Silver color options.
Pricing & Availability:
- 6+128GB variant – CNY 3,199 (USD 477, INR 32,691)
- 8+128GB variant – CNY 3,499 (USD 521, INR 35,745)
- 8+256GB variant – CNY 3,799 (USD 566, INR 38,810)
- 12+256GB variant – CNY 4,199 (USD 625, INR 42,897)
- Available in China from Jd.com
- No information about the availability in international markets, but internal sources says that it will launch in India soon.
So that’s all the information we have as of now. This will become a very impressive gaming smartphone at the asking price, but if keeping the price aside, I find Asus ROG phone a better deal, because of the accessibility of the ports given in it. Well, what are your thoughts on this Black Shark 2? Let us know in the comment section below. Also stay tuned with us for more information.