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Black Shark... Gaming Redefined.

With phones becoming more similar than different in 2020, here we have Xiaomi doing something really ambitious with its Black Shark line-up of gaming smartphones, and at a very compelling price. The target audience of this phone is the mobile gaming community, the ones who take it a little too seriously. Many of the features on this phone are targeted to appeal the gamers out there. Here we take a look at an overview of this phone and our thoughts on this phone.

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The Black Shark line-up consists of 2 phones, the mid-ranger: Black Shark 3, and the more expensive Black Shark 3 pro. Being a 2020 budget flagship, the phone has it all, with a specific emphasis given to gaming and thus optimizations on the CPU and GPU front.
The Black Shark 3 has a large 6.67 inch FHD+ Super Amoled display, with a refresh rate of 90Hz. The display is smooth and fluid, everything you would expect from a phone in this segment. Although it is not at 120Hz, it is still a very fluid display.
On the processor side, it comes with the latest Snapdragon 865 chipset, along with an adreno 650 GPU for the best in class performance.
On the software front it comes with Android 10, but has a custom skin called Joy UI, which is very similar to MI UI, with a few tweaks to make it gaming-centric, such as the improved gaming mode, and the customization of the two gaming specific buttons on the side of the phone. Yes, the UI is not perfect, but that was not even the intent of this phone.
The phone comes with 8Gb of Ram along with 128Gb of storage on the base model, all the way up to 12 + 256 on the top model. The storage is ufs 3.0, so it allows for fast data transfer speeds.
The cameras are not their strongest features, with a 64Mp primary camera along with a 13Mp wide - angle lens and a 5Mp depth sensor. The cameras are descent, but pretty visibly behind the competition at this price. The front camera too, at 20Mp is descent, but not as good as the others in this price.
The speakers on this phone are amazing, with dual front facing stereo speakers, which are incredibly loud, this phone gives a highly immersive experience while listening to audio from the speakers. The phone also retains the headphone jack, a feature pretty important to hardcore gamers.
On the battery front, it comes with a large 4720mAh battery, and with incredibly fast charging at 65W, which charges the phone completely in about 38 Minutes. The phone comes with the usual In-Display fingerprint scanner, but is not IP-68 certified.

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Coming to the pro version, it has mostly the same internal specifications as the non- pro version. The differences are that the pro version comes with a huge 7.1 inch QHD+ display, and with a max storage capacity of 12+512. It also comes with a slightly bigger 5000mAh battery, although it should give you similar battery life owing to the bigger screen. The biggest difference is that the pro comes with two pop-up physical gaming triggers at the side of the phone, which are activated by enabling gaming mode.
The price is also a major point of difference between these phones, with the pro being significantly higher priced than the non pro version. The Black Shark 3, in India is expected to cost around Rs. 36,690. On the other hand, the pro is much more expensive, expected to cost around Rs 49,190.

So what do we think of these phones? Are they any good? Well, if you are a gamer, the specs above would have surely got you convinced. The Black Shark is an amazing phone, almost a gaming paradise. Although the 3 pro, is the ultimate gaming heaven, we understand that at that price, not everyone is comfortable spending that much when basically the other non - gaming aspects of the phone such as the cameras and the UI are not really up to the mark. But, the cheaper Black Shark 3, is actually very perfectly priced for what it has to offer, and I believe the gaming community will love this phone and all the features it brings.
However, we do have other phones at this price, which bring performance which is not that much different from the Black Shark, but they bring other improvements such as the camera and UI. The target audience of the Black Shark is a very small group of hardcore gaming enthusiasts, who would want nothing more than the absolute best gaming performance from their phone.
We just need to wait for the phone to launch in India and see what the sales look like.


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The contents of this post are purely opinions of the writer and are in no way targeted to undermine or promote any particular company. These are his thoughts on this topic, and a means to spread information.

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