Gaming-Centric Xiaomi Black Shark 2 Launched With Snapdragon 855, 12GB RAM, Liquid Cooling 3.0

The Chinese phone maker Xiaomi finally announced its next gaming-centric smartphone, the Black Shark 2 which has been featured in quite a few leaks in the last couple of weeks. The handset is a successor to the last year’s Black Shark Helo. The new gaming smartphone is launched in the Chinese market, and it comes with a lot of improvements over its predecessor. A large Full-HD+ AMOLED panel with a powerful Snapdragon 855 SoC under the hood are the key highlights of the phone.

Now let’s move to more details of the much-awaited Xiaomi gaming smartphone.

Xiaomi Black Shark 2: Specifications, Design & Features

The latest Xiaomi gaming phone is built with glass and metal. Its back panel is embedded with an RGB backlit LED ‘S’ logo. You can see that the back panels of the Black Shark 2 and the Black Shark Helo are pretty similar in terms of design. However, there are still some notable differences between them. For example, the dual camera module is now pushed to the left side of the handset instead of staying the top mid of the phone like on the Black Shark Helo.

As mentioned, it sports a large 6.39-inch FHD+ AMOLED panel with a 2,340 x 1,080p resolution and a 19.5:9 aspect ratio. The gaming handset also has minimal bezels on both sides which offer much better grief and also prevent users from accidentally touching the display. Xiaomi also equips its display with DC dimming tech for tweaking the screen effects automatically accordingly to the surroundings.

Similar to other latest flagship offerings, the Black Shark 2 packs the most powerful Snapdragon 855 SoC, paired with up to 12GB RAM/256GB internal storage and an Adreno 640 GPU. As hinted on previous leaks, Xiaomi also integrates the new Liquid Cooling 3 tech so that the phone will have better heat dispersion as well as thermal throttling, especially during long gaming sessions. This new tech is also touted to allow the Black Shark 2’s CPU to operate at 14°C lower than normal. Besides that, the Black Shark 2 also has a unique feature called “Ludicrous Mode” which enables all the CPU cores to focus on processing a single task which is said to deliver a much more stable gaming session without a single fps dropping. In addition, Xiaomi also offers an external cooling case that is claimed to help the phone to reduce up to 5 degree.

Moreover, users can also connect the handset to a display using an HDMI cable which will be a substantial advantage for gamers who are playing games such as PUBG Mobile and Fortnite Mobile.

As for the camera, the handset sports a dual camera system on the rear, including a 48MP Sony IMX586 main sensor and a 13MP secondary shooter. Up front, there is a 20MP selfie camera.

Powering the phone is a large 4,000mAh cell with 27W fast charging support which is touted to allow users to play games for 30 minutes in just 5 minutes of charging. As for the software, it runs BlackShark OS which is based on the latest Android 9.0 Pie.

Black Shark 2: Price & Availability

The base variant of the Black Shark 2 with 6GB of RAM/128GB of storage costs RMB 3,199 (around Rs. 32,700) while the 8GB of RAM/256GB of storage variant is priced at RMB 3,499 (around Rs. 35,800). The two top-end models with 8GB of RAM/256GB of storage and 12GB of RAM/256GB of storage will set you back by RMB 3,799 (around Rs. 38,800) and RMB 4,199 (around Rs. 42,900), respectively.

However, Xiaomi only announces the handset in the Chinese market, and it only confirmed that the phone will eventually come to India, but there is no exact launch date. Consumers can now pre-order the handset in the Chinese market, and it will be up for sale from 22 March.