Xiaomi Black Shark: the liquid-cooled gaming monster
by Seth L.
Xiaomi Malaysia /
With the advent of highly demanding mobile games like Fortnite and PUBG, smartphone pixel pushing capabilities has been bumped up into the stratosphere to meet the gamers’ needs. Recently, Xiaomi marked their first foray into the gaming phone market via the Black Shark Gaming Phone, a device created in partnership with Black Shark Technology, a gaming company in China. This phone is apparently plenty powerful and packed with some interesting features, so let’s check it out…
WATER COOLED PREDATOR
Looking like a distant Chinese cousin of the Razer Phone, The green-edged Black Shark comes in two colors – Polar Night (Black) and Sky Gray (Silver) – feels aggressive sitting in our hands, with its sharp angled cut-away edges and X-shaped back panel emblazoned with a fierce-looking logo. The X-shaped back panel is a design feature with positions for you to rest your fingers, making the smartphone more comfortable when held in the horizontal gaming position.
The device has standard volume rockers and power switch on the right with the Home button on the front doubling up as a fingerprint scanner, mini track pad and Xiaomi Game Dock access.
Camera-wise, the Black Shark is no slouch, with a 12MP + 20MP camera setup on the back with f/1.75 , and a 20MP f/2.2 camera up front.
Gamers certainly won’t be disappointed with the specs as the Black Shark is powered by a Snapdragon 845 with Adreno GPU, 6-inch, 1080p 21:9 HDR display, up to 8GB of RAM, up to 128GB storage and a 4,000 mAh battery with Quick Charge 3.0.
It seems like the rumoured 120Hz display panel did not come true but in its place, the Black Shark leverages on a dedicated Pixelworks image processing chip with Iris technology that can offer cinematic quality video and true to life color accuracy.
Being a gaming phone in a gamers’ hands means the smartphone will run fast and hot, almost all the time, forcing the Snapdragon 845 octa-core processor to throttle when it hits too high of a temperature. Luckily for you, the Black Shark has a special multi-stage water-cooling system that is able to lower down the temperature of its processor by up to 8 degrees Celsius, and that will definitely help you play through those marathon gaming sessions.
As with all gaming-centric devices, they are only as good as the specs and the peripherals support they will get. So for now, the smartphone will be receiving a Black Shark Gaming D-pad with an internalised rechargeable 340mAh battery pack that connects to the smartphone via Bluetooth. This D-pad will be offered for free for the first 50,000 customers.
VERDICT
So can the Black Shark swim with the big mobile gaming boys? Oh yes it can. Rocking some pretty respectable specs, innovative features and a pretty decent design, the Xiaomi Black Shark is specially made to appeal to all hardcore mobile gamers out there.
Currently, the unit with 6GB RAM and 64GB internal storage will be sold for CNY 2999 (RM 1857+-) while the other one with 8GB RAM and 128GB internal storage is going for CNY 3499 (RM 2165+-) The Black Shark Gaming D-pad is sold separately (after the promotion period) for CNY 180 (RM 111+-)
The Black Shark is currently up for pre order online in China but there is no new of release to the rest of the world just yet. Bummer…
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