Black Shark has never failed to surprise us with their gaming flagships. Traditionally, the company used to release a gaming device at the start of the year and then an updated version in the second half of the year. However, today, the company disrupted its release cycle by announcing a regular version as well as a Pro version in its Black Shark gaming lineup. So China gets two new Black Shark gaming phones: the Black Shark 3 and the Black Shark 3 Pro.
Let’s take a close look at both these devices.
Black Shark 3 Pro Design
Both the new models continue with the brand’s X themed design, with sharp geometrical curves and grooves on the back. The biggest change in the Black Shark 3 lineup is the redesigned triangle camera housing. The company continues to opt for a symmetrical design philosophy, so you get a matching triangle-shaped design at the bottom half of the back as well.
There are several important upgrades in the Black Shark 3 lineup’s design. First up, you have a new Tencent Games and 5G logos on the bottom half of the two devices. The company has partnered with Tencent games to optimize gameplay on both these devices. So the Black Shark 3 and 3 Pro models feature Tencent’s SolarCore Gaming Acceleration Engine in addition to Black Shark’s own Gaming Engine.
There are three cameras at the back of the device, and in case you are wondering, the Black Shark 3 lineup gets rid of a telephoto sensor in favor of an ultra-wide-angle sensor. The third sensor is a dedicated depth of field shooter. Both the models get a dedicated 3.5mm headphone jack and feature special magnetic pins (capable of 18W charging).
The biggest difference between the two models in terms of design is the presence of two tactile physical buttons on the right side of the Pro variant which the standard variant lacks.
Black Shark 3 Pro Specs
The display gets a massive upgrade on both the models. Instead of the 6.39-inch AMOLED screen on the Black Shark 2 Pro, the new Black Shark 3 features a 6.67-inch AMOLED panel with the industry’s first 270Hz touch sampling rate. This combined with a 24ms touch response time and a 28ms multi-finger touch response time ensures that you face minimal touch lags during gameplay. The touch panel refreshes at 90Hz, ensuring smooth scrolling and animations.
The Black Shark 3 Pro model takes things to another level. It comes with a tablet-sized 7.1-inch AMOLED panel with a Quad HD+ 3120 x 1440p resolution display. It’s nearly the size of Mate 20 X’s massive screen but with a higher resolution! Clearly, the Black Shark 3 Pro has one of the best displays for mobile gaming.
As for the other specs, both the models feature the new Snapdragon 865 flagship processor with up to 12GB of LPDDR5 and 256GB of UFS 3.0 storage. Sadly, iQOO seems to be the only brand that has updated its top-end lineup to UFS 3.1. The rest of the brands, including Xiaomi’s Mi 10 Pro 5G continues to feature UFS 3.0 standard as last year.
Both the models feature 5G and Wi-Fi 6 and there’s a special mode that can combine both these connections to increase bandwidth.
Black Shark 3 Pro Gaming Features
As mentioned above, the Black Shark 3 Pro features two mechanical gaming buttons on its right side. Black Shark explains that each of these buttons is 21mm long and features a 1.5mm keystroke. They are good for over 1 million clicks. Unfortunately, the standard variant skips on these buttons. The Pro variant also gets horizontal linear motors for better tactile feedback during gameplay.
The rest of the gaming-centric features are common to both the models. This includes a special liquid “Sandwich Cooling system”. Black Shark explained at the event that its new models employ a dual-battery design with a 116mm motherboard in between. The company has placed heating components like the CPU and 5G modems as far apart as possible. In fact, the company claims that the distance between the two units on the motherboard is nearly 39mm.
In addition to this, the Black Shark 3 models feature two 100mm liquid cooling units placed on the two sides of the motherboard. This creates a sandwich design and now you know how this cooling design gets its name. Further, there’s graphite coating on the two cooling units as well. If this wasn’t enough, Black Shark is also selling a clip-on ice-cooling external fan for the device, similar to what we saw for the Mi 10 series.
There’s also a special voice control feature that allows you to initiate actions during gameplay. For example, if you call out “grenade” while playing a game like Arena of Valor, the player will throw out grenades. We are not sure of how exactly this works but we expect limited games to support this.
Black Shark 3 Pro Cameras
Cameras were never the selling point of gaming smartphones but the new Black Shark 3 lineup adds a couple of upgrades in this department. Note that the setup is identical on both the models.
The primary camera gets upgraded from 48MP to 64MP. The two models ditch the telephoto shooter from the Black Shark 2 Pro and add two sensors: A 120-degree ultra-wide-angle shooter of 13MP and a dedicated 5MP depth of field sensor.
Black Shark 3 Pro Battery
The Black Shark 3 features a 4720mAh battery with 65W fast charging while the Pro version increases the battery size to 5000mAh with the same fast charging tech. Incredibly, despite featuring a larger battery, both models take the same time to charge to 100%. So you can charge the two models up to 100% in just 38 minutes!
Black Shark 3 Pro Pricing & Availability
The Black Shark 3 Pro pricing is as follows:
- 8GB RAM + 256GB ROM – 4699 yuan (~$674)
- 12GB RAM + 256GB ROM – 4999 yuan (~$717)
Black Shark 3 Pricing is as follows:
- 8GB RAM + 128GB ROM – 3499 yuan (~$502)
- 12GB RAM + 128GB ROM – 3799 yuan(~$545)
- 12GB RAM + 256GB ROM – 3999 yuan (~$573)
It is worth noting that the 12GB RAM + 128GB ROM variant of the Black Shark 2 Pro started at a much cheaper $430 price tag. So the new series definitely takes a big leap in its pricing.
The Black Shark 3 model goes on sale for the first time on March 6, while the Pro variant will go on sale much later on March 17 in China.
