Xiaomi Black Shark Could Redefine Gaming Smartphones

If you haven’t heard of Chinese consumer electronics company Xiaomi, you will soon. With the images leaked of their first flagship gaming smartphone, the Xiaomi Black Shark, just a few days ago, the company seemed ready to challenge competitors in the smartphone gaming industry. With the recent announcement and official press release, the Xiaomi Black Shark looks to be offer both a smartphone and gaming experience unlike any other phone on the market.

As a smartphone, the Xiaomi Black Shark matches up with other top phones on the market, containing a Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 processor, 6 or 8 GB RAM and a 2160 x 1080 px screen. The cutting-edge device also contains several powerful cameras, the rear featuring a 12MP, aperture of f/1.75 and a 20MP, aperture of f/1.75 camera and the front featuring a 20MP sensor with an aperture of f/2.2 camera. For reference, the smaller the denominator of the aperture fraction, the more light is let into the camera and the shallower the focus.

While the Xiaomi Black Shark is an excellent smartphone in its own right, its the gaming components that make it so special. The phone features a liquid cooling system designed to keep processors functioning at excellent rates even during graphically or gameplay intense sections. Additionally, Xiaomi has partnered up with video and pixel processing company Pixelworks to include the Iris chipset, a set that has been one of the standards of the gaming industry.

The Black Shark press release explains the features further:

• True Clarity for smooth, blur-free motion to videos and gaming
• True Color for 1 billion accurate, yet vibrant colors
• In-line color calibration to achieve a color accuracy where it is impossible to notice differences in actual color vs. displayed color
• A comprehensive tone-mapping pipeline to render HDR10 videos true to the creator’s intent
• Sophisticated contrast management and sharpness for a more realistic gameplay

To enhance gameplay even further, you can purchase a Black Shark detachable controller. It snaps to one side of the screen and connects via Bluetooth.

The Black Shark controller weighs just 40 grams and features a front button and directional stick, plus a left trigger and a left button. While the Black Shark itself boasts a 4000 mAh battery – about 134 standby hours – the gamepad only has a 340 mAh battery – about 3.5 hours of use. The first 5000 buyers of the Xiaomi Black Shark will get the gamepad for free, after which the controller will cost around $28.

Currently, Xiaomi has only announced a launch date for the Chinese market – April 20th. The 6GB of RAM, 64 GB storage model will sell for around $477, while 8 GB RAM, 128 GB storage model will cost users $557.

You can compare the Black Shark with it’s biggest rival, Razer’s eponymously named Razer Phone, here!

Update: Already on the market, Xiaomi’s gaming phone could make an appearance at Mobile World Congress Shanghai. Keep an eye out for it in our video coverage!