While OEMs like Razer and Asus have dedicated lineup for ‘gaming’ phones out there, some companies decided to take a different path. Rather than including a bunch of high config components (e.g. display panel with higher refresh rate) in regular phones, they prefer to spawn an entirely new subsidiary.

black_shark_front_back
The first gen Black Shark phone from Xiaomi

Yes, I know you guessed it already. Black Shark, now an independent entity, was revealed itself as the mobile game centric wing of Xiaomi back in 2018. Instead of remodeling existing models, the company designed their phones from scratch with the help of Xiaomi R&D.

The unique Black-Green color combination and gaming optimized cooling system are some of the unique selling points of Black Shark phones. Initially available only in China, the company quickly released their phones as well other accessories (such as console quality gamepad) to global markets after a few months.

black_shark_gamepad_2.0

The original Black Shark was succeeded by Black Shark Helo at the end of 2018. However, it’s the Black Shark 2 which should be considered as the true successor for both of them.

Black Shark 2 was released in March 2019 and (unsurprisingly) features Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC. Like every other Black Shark phones, it runs JoyUI – a skin fundamentally different from MIUI found in other Xiaomi devices. The phones also comes with liquid cooling tech to handle the powerful CPU+GPU combo.

black_shark_2_front_back
Black Shark 2

After Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 855+ platform (a minor refresh over regular SD855), a number of Android OEMs, including Black Shark, teased their plans to release new phones with the upgraded SoC. Well, we should get the next version of Black Shark 2 sooner than expected.

A few hours ago, the official Weibo channel of Black Shark posted an invitation regarding Black Shark 2 Pro! The release date should be July 30, as indicated in the announcement poster.

black_shark_2_pro_poster

We already know that Asus is preparing their next gen Asus ROG Phone with the same Snapdragon 855+, but the exact release date is still unknown. Nonetheless, the upcoming Black Shark 2 Pro should be a worthy contender against the ROG Phone II.

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.

Kingshuk De
896 Posts

I came from a mixed background of Statistics and Computer Science. My research domains included embedded computer systems, mobile computing and delay tolerant networks in post-disaster scenarios. Apart from tinkering with gadgets or building hackintosh, I like to hop on various subreddits and forums like MyDigitalLife and XDA.

Next article View Article

[April 10: Official acknowledgement for recommended videos bug] YouTube Library tab broken and sidebar missing, users say

This story is being continuously updated…. New updates are being added at the bottom….. Original story (from 2019) follows: Incoming are reports related to two separate YouTube-related issues. The...
Apr 10, 2020 0 Min Read