When it comes to gaming phones, Black Shark is a brand that cannot be ignored. Most of you already know that this brand is focused on gaming phones since it was founded back in 2018, but how about the fact that the brand is invested by another well-known brand, Xiaomi. So on these Black Shark models, some features remind us of the typical Xiaomi touch, such as the operating system based on MIUI, and, of course, the great value of money. 

So today, the phone that we are going to share with you is one of their latest gaming models, the Black Shark 4. The main reason why we love this model is the pricing. The global version of the Blackshark 4 starts from 499 USD and is officially available now. It’s easily the most cost-effective gaming phone that you can buy globally in 2021. So if you are thinking about buying the Black shark 4, please check the link here. Considering its popularity in China, we’re pretty sure that it will soon be out of stock. 

And even when compared to the Pro version, there’s no doubt that the standard Blackshark 4 is better value for money. You can check the comparison down below. To be honest, most upgrades on the Pro didn’t lead to a big difference in the gaming experience.

Black Shark 4 Review: Design 

The Black Shark 4 series’ design has changed a lot compared to their previous models. Now the Black Shark 4 looks much closer to a regular phone, being simplified and low-profile. The phone no longer has uneven surfaces with a combination of metal and glass on the rear design. Instead, it’s made up of a whole piece of smooth glass reshaping the phone’s appearance and giving gamers a different holding experience.

But thanks to the pop-up shoulder triggers, the Blackshark 4 is still one of the few gaming phones that offer the best gaming operation. Compared to others’ touch or pressure-sensitive buttons, the pop-up triggers can provide more intuitive physical feedback and give gamers a similar gaming experience to the gamepads. 

About these two buttons, you can also customize them for special uses in different scenarios beyond gaming. For example, we can define the bottom Trigger as the switch of the one-hand mode to greatly improve the efficiency during one-hand use and even customize the top button for instant screenshots. And in the camera app, we can use the bottom button as the shutter button, while keeping the top one for zooming in. And by the way, the simulated mechanical sound effect of the trigger switch is so delightful that I can’t help sliding it from time to time. 

As a gaming phone, the Black Shark 4 is not too heavy or bulky. It won’t cause much discomfort for long-time gaming. But at the same time, the relatively compact body does not allow the phone to feature a large battery as compared to other gaming phones. Therefore, to make up for the 4500mAh battery, Black Shark surprisingly features a 120W fast charging, which is one of the fastest charging solutions that you can have on a smartphone so far. 

Black Shark 4 Review: Display

Now let’s look at its front. The Blackshark 4 features a 144Hz 1080P hole-punch display. And this display is made of the same Samsung E4 panel as the Mi 11 series, so there is no need to worry about the display quality. In the actual test, my eyes didn’t really feel discomfort after playing games for a long time on the phone. 

And thanks to the dual forward-facing speakers, the phone is really good at delivering wonderful sound quality with stereo effect without using earphones. Or if you prefer wired audio quality rather than using the speakers, Blackshark was kind enough to reserve the 3.5mm headphone jack at the bottom. 

As for in-game software optimization, Blackshark developed an official app to help you manage installed games with a customized running performance setup. And if you are fond of using the official accessories, you can also manage the setup of these gaming equipment in the same app. Among these gaming accessories, there is an excellent cooling fan accessory that helps the phone achieve better performance output without suffering any heating issue. It’s the latest Funcooler 2 Pro. 

This external cooling fan is easily the best one that we’ve ever used. We will show you its cooling effect in actual gaming very soon. 

Black Shark 4 Review: Performance & Gaming

The Snapdragon 870 chipset in the Blackshark 4 is already able to handle almost all Android games without any performance issues. Although the results shown in the benchmarks indicated a performance gap between the 870 and the 888 chipsets, in actual use and gaming, the experience gap is really unperceivable. 

Now let’s check out the results of actual gaming.  

In the PUBG Mobile China version, we found a way to turn on 90fps framerate support under HDR graphics on the Blackshark 4. But by far this method is only available on Blackshark 4 and doesn’t work on the other latest models. The framerate easily went up to 90fps and remained at 89.04fps on an average during the entire test. By the way, gamers would definitely enjoy playing the game with the pop-up triggers. They are the best shoulder buttons for the PUBG Mobile that we’ve ever played with. 

The second game we ran was Genshin Impact. The Blackshark 4 again presented excellent stability over the running framerate. There wasn’t much fluctuation during the 30-minute test and meanwhile, it maintained an average framerate at 54.8fps, which is also one of the best performances that we’ve tested on a phone running the Snapdragon 870. 

Then we ran the game Nimian Legend as our final stress test. The result was also not bad at all. The average framerate of 51.72fps also proves its strength as a gaming phone. But meanwhile, if we look closer at the CPU temperature, it’s obvious that the phone applied such an aggressive CPU strategy that it even allowed the CPU temperature to run up to 72℃. And it also led to a pretty hot holding experience.

Then we decided to connect the official cooling accessory, the Funcooler 2 Pro. Well, this cooling monster didn’t disappoint us. In its frozen mode, the CPU temperature dropped by over 5℃. And over the running framerate, it achieved an improvement of around 2.1fps with less fluctuation. Even if you are not playing games with Blackshark phones, we still recommend it as the best phone cooler for you.

Black Shark 4 Review: Battery Life & Charging

The battery life of the 4500mAh capacity didn’t bring us surprises, and this battery doesn’t really match its performance as a gaming phone. But fortunately, we have the 120W fast charge, which greatly comforts my anxiety every time it’s running out of power. The full charge only took us 16mins. Yes, 16 MINUTES! It’s pretty insane when you look at the rapidly rising battery percentage. 

As for the audio quality of the speakers, there is nothing we could complain about. All we can say is that the speakers here are also one of the best stereo mobile speakers.

Black Shark 4 Review: Verdict

Unlike the Legion 2 Pro that we reviewed last week, the Black Shark 4 seems to care more about the balance between being a phone and a gaming machine. Probably you would complain about its common appearance, but if you truly use it for gaming, it won’t disappoint you with the excellent performance and friendly operation.

In addition, Black Shark has developed some interesting gaming accessories for their phones. So if you are not satisfied with the performance of the model, those kinds of accessories are able to improve your gaming experience to some extent.

If you are interested in more details about the brand and the phone, please check out the link here. It’s now available globally. 

RELATED: 

• Realme GT Neo Review: The first phone with MTK Dimensity 1200
• OPPO F19 Review: A lightweight 5000mAh smartphone under ₹20,000
• OnePlus 9 Pro Review: A top 2021 flagship with an excellent Hasselblad Camera
• Poco X3 Pro Review: Snapdragon 860 takes performance to the next level

The post Black Shark 4 Review: The Most Cost-effective Gaming Phone in H1 2021 appeared first on Gizmochina.

Gaming smartphone brand Black Shark has officially launched its latest handsets in the form of the Black Shark 4 series. The lineup includes a total of two devices, namely Black Shark 4 and Black Shark 4 Pro. Let us take a look at the design, specs, features, price, and availability of these phones in this article.

Black Shark 4 Series Design

Unlike the ASUS ROG Phone 5 series, the Black Shark 4 series comes with minimal design when compared to its predecessors. However, it adopts new mechanical shoulder buttons, which use magnetic power-lifting.

Other than that, the devices sport a simple gradient rear panel with a horizontally-aligned triple camera setup. Also, It is worth noting that the X-gradient on the back of the handsets reminds us of the HONOR X series.

1 of 3

Black Shark 4 Series Specifications and Features

The Black Shark 4 and the Black Shark 4 Pro come with an identical set of specifications except for a few differences here and there.

Talking about dissimilarities first, the vanilla Black Shark 4 is powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 SoC. On the other hand, the Black Shark 4 Pro features a more powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC.

Further, the non-Pro model maxes at 12GB RAM, whereas the Pro model sports up to 16GB RAM. Additionally, the regular one has 5500MHz LPDDR5 memory while the Pro variant comes with a 6400MHz LPDDR5 memory chip. Similarly, although both feature UFS 3.1 storage, the Pro not only includes an SSD disk array system but also comes with up to 512GB storage, compared to 256GB on the non-Pro.

As for optics, the duo features an 8MP 120° ultra-wide camera, a 5MP auto-focus macro camera, and a 20MP punch-hole selfie camera. However, the primary shooters are different on both. The standard model has a 48MP Sony IMX582 sensor while the Pro version features a 64MP Sony IMX686 sensor.

Coming to similarities, the phones flaunt a 6.67-inch FHD+ (1080 x 2400 pixels) Samsung E4 Super AMOLED flat display. This SGS eye protection-certified pressure-sensitive screen supports 144Hz refresh rate, 720Hz multi-finger touch sampling rate, 8.3ms multi-finger touch response delay, 1,300 nits peak brightness, DC Dimming, MEMC, and 111% DCI-P3 color gamut

On the connectivity front, the handset support dual-SIM, 5G (only single SIM at a time), WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2, GNSS (GPS, Galileo, GLONASS, Beidou, QZSS, A-GPS), and NFC. They also sport all the essential sensors, such as an accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient light sensor, compass, proximity sensor, and a side-mounted fingerprint sensor.

Other features of the Black Shark 4 series include dual stereo speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack, Z-axis linear vibration motor, liquid cooling system, JOYUI 12.5 based on Android 11 with tons of gaming features, 4,500mAh battery, 120W fast charging, and two USB Type-C ports.

Lastly, the Black Shark 4 comes in five colors (Magic Mirror Black, Ink Sea Black, Lingguang Gray, Storm Blue, Sakura Dance Pink), measures 163.83 x 76.35 x 9.9mm in dimensions, and weighs 210g. Whereas, the Black Shark 4 Pro has the exact same dimensions but it weighs 220g and comes in four colors (Suikong Black, Prism Gray, Ink Sea Black,  Zhan Yuqing).

Black Shark 4 Series Price and Availability

The Black Shark 4 series will retail for the following price tags in China.

Black Shark 4

• 6GB + 128GB – ¥2,499 ($384)
• 8GB + 128GB – ¥2,699 ($414)
• 12GB + 128GB – ¥2,999 ($460)
• 12GB + 256GB – ¥3,299 ($506)

Black Shark 4 Pro

• 8GB + 256GB – ¥3,999 ($614)
• 12GB + 256GB – ¥4,499 ($691)
• 16GB + 512GB – ¥5,299 ($814)

The smartphones are currently up for pre-order in China and their first sale is scheduled for March 26 in the country.

As of now, Black Shark is yet to confirm the global availability of these handsets.

RELATED:

• POCO X3 Pro flagship killer launched with Snapdragon 860 chipset, 120Hz display, Liquid Cooling, & more
• Honor V40 Light Luxury Edition Launched, features thin and light design and curved display
• Honor Pad 7 with 10.1-inch FHD display goes official; pricing starts at 1,399 yuan ($215)
• Black Shark launches new Earphones, Cooling Back Clip, and other accessories
• The POCO F3 arrives as the Redmi K40 for global markets

The post Black Shark 4 series launched with 720Hz touch sampling rate, mechanical shoulder buttons, and more appeared first on Gizmochina.

The Black Shark 4 gaming smartphone will be announced on Monday, March 23, and it will pack some pretty impressive features, some of which have been confirmed by Black Shark itself. Ahead of the launch, we have got info on two new features that gamers will love.

First is from the Chinese leaker, Digital Chat Station, and he mentioned in a Weibo post that the Black Shark 4 will have a record-breaking 720Hz touch sampling rate!

The post mentions other specifications of the phone too. It will have a Samsung E4 AMOLED display with a 144Hz refresh rate and a 2.76mm sized punch hole. It will also have a Snapdragon 870 processor, a 4500mAh battery, 120W fast wired charging, motorized shoulder buttons, and triple rear cameras arranged horizontally like those of the Samsung Galaxy S10.

The second interesting feature is the motorized shoulder buttons which have been officially confirmed by Black Shark. A Weibo post by the CEO of Xiaomi, Lei Jun, said the mechanical buttons will rise when playing a game and retract when not in use. The video below shows the buttons in action.

Alongside the Black Shark 4 will come the Black Shark 4 Pro which will have a Snapdragon 888 processor powering it. It will also have a 4500mAh battery, support for 120W fast wired charging, and an AMOLED display. Both phones are expected to run Android 11 out of the box.

RELATED:

• ASUS ROG Phone 5 premium gaming smartphone fails durability test
• OnePlus 9R confirmed to launch in India on March 23, will provide a flagship experience at an affordable price
• Nubia RedMagic 6, 6 Pro launched in China: Specs, Features, and Price

The post Black Shark 4 reported to have a 720Hz touch sampling rate, new teasers show off motorized shoulder buttons appeared first on Gizmochina.

Black Shark has been dormant on the launch of Black Shark 4 devices. The company is expected to launch two smartphones in the series. However, before the launch, a possible Black Shark 4 Pro variant has been spotted on Geekbench.

A smartphone with model number KSR-A0 appears on Geekbench 5 with the codename ‘Kaiser’. We have seen reports of this device earlier and it was believed to be the Black Shark 4. However, a tipster recently said that the company had changed plans.

As per the reports, the Black Shark 4 series will include two devices- Black Shark 4 and Black Shark 4 Pro. Out of this, the ‘Pro’ variant is said to feature the flagship Snapdragon 888 chipset while the non-Pro will darn the Snapdragon 870 SoC.

To clear you up, the two smartphones that are believed to belong to the Black Shark 4 series, have the following codenames thanks to various certifications like TENAA, 3C:

• Black Shark 4
  • codename: SHARK PSR-A0(3C)
• Black Shark 4 Pro
  • codename: SHARK KSR-A0(TENAA)

Talking about the Geekbench listing itself, we couldn’t find it on the Geekbench database. However, MySmartPrice has reported it first and from the screenshots, we can see that the device features Adreno 660 GPU, has 12GB RAM, runs Android 11, and scores 1,140 and 3,754 on single and multi-core categories.

If this turns out to be the ‘Pro’ variant, then the device will likely sport a 6.67-inch FHD+ display with a 20:9 aspect ratio. This is a downgrade from the 1440p resolution on the predecessor. The devices could also have up to 12GB RAM, 512GB storage, 4,500mAh battery with 120W fast charging support.

With companies like Nubia, ASUS opting for crazy 16/18GB RAM versions, we wouldn’t be surprised if Black Shark joins this bandwagon in 2021.

RELATED:

• Dell launched a speckled variant of the G15 gaming laptop, first arrives in China
• ‘Fnatic Mode’on OnePlus phones is now called ‘Pro Gaming Mode’
• Poll of The Week: What do you think of gaming smartphones in 2021?

(Via)

The post Alleged Black Shark 4 Pro spotted on Geekbench with Snapdragon 888 chipset appeared first on Gizmochina.

Black Shark is gearing up to launch the Black Shark 4 gaming smartphone, the successor to the last year’s Black Shark 3S. The brand has officially confirmed some of its features. Now, some more specs leak via the phone’s TENAA listing.

As of now, Black Shark has revealed that the upcoming Black Shark 4 will be powered by the all-new 5nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 SoC. Further, it will be backed by a 4,500mAh battery with support for 120W fast charging.

Further, as per TENAA, the handset will flaunt a 6.67-inch display. Going by its predecessors, the phone should come with a high refresh rate OLED screen with at least FHD+  resolution.

As for connectivity, the smartphone will support 5G and it will run Android 11 with Joy UI on top of it. Last but not least, the device will measure 163.83 x 76.35 x 10.3mm in dimensions.

Unfortunately, nothing else is known about this handset except for the fact that it is codenamed ‘Kaiser’ with model number KSR-A0 can score around 788,505 points on AnTuTu Benchmark.

That said, we expect to learn more about the Black Shark 4 in the coming days as the brand has been teasing it officially for the past few days. Like any other Chinese brand, we believe that Black Shark will reveal the design of its upcoming smartphone while announcing the launch date.

RELATED:

• Next Black Shark gaming phone will be invincible, claims Black Shark CEO
• Black Shark announces new mobile accessories including 30W charger, shoulder triggers, and charging cables
• ASUS ROG 3 vs Lenovo Legion Pro vs RedMagic 5S vs Black Shark 3S: The Best Gaming phones of 2020 Reviewed

(Via)

The post Black Shark 4 gets certified by TENAA appeared first on Gizmochina.