When the original Black Shark gaming phone came out in 2018, it made headlines and caused a stir in the smartphone market. The Black Shark 2 released in 2019 continued the wave, claiming Black Shark as a leading gaming smartphone brand. And in March 2020, the company announced the Black Shark 3 Pro alongside the Black Shark 3.

Black Shark is a product series from Black Shark Technology that has made headlines in the past few years for making hard-core gaming smartphones. The Black Shark 3 series is the third generation of its designated handsets for gaming.

The Black Shark 3 comes at a price of Rs 45,999, cheaper than the Black Shark 3 Pro (Rs 49,190). To compare, the Black Shark 2 from last year was priced at Rs 42,499 and the original Black Shark was priced at Rs 30,990.

Display

The Black Shark 3 sports an AMOLED capacitive touchscreen that measures 6.67 inches, which is a bit smaller than the Black Shark 3 Pro, but significantly larger than other smartphones on the market. This screen size allows for a better viewing experience in both videos and games.

AMOLED, or active-matrix organic light-emitting diode, is currently the most advanced technology for smartphone display. It allows for larger, higher-resolution, thinner screens.

Like the higher-end Pro version, this phone doesn’t have a notch or punch hole on the screen. Instead, its display has a thin bezel at on top to house the front-facing camera and the phone speaker. This design helps avoid the annoying curve that blocks your view when you play games.

Also, the phone has a screen resolution of 1080x2400 pixels, a pixel density of 395 ppi, a maximum brightness of 550 nits, a refresh rate of 90Hz, and support for HDR10+ mode. While the pixel density is lower than that of the Black Shark 3 Pro (458 ppi), the Black Shark 3 still offers an excellent viewing experience. The most important thing to notice here is the 90Hz refresh rate that will let you navigate smoothly in apps and games. Besides, the high brightness will allow for easy viewing when you’re outdoor.

As you may expect from a hard-core gaming smartphone, this screen certainly display is responsive to touch and display smooth, sharp, bright images in testing with PUBG Mobile. Also, with a 20:9 ratio, the screen is long, which means when you hold it horizontally for gaming, you have space on either side to use the button but can still see everything going on.

Chip

The Black Shark 3 is powered by the Snapdragon 865 processor, Qualcomm’s newest and currently most powerful phone chip. This octa-core processor features 4 1.8GHz cores, triple 2.42GHz cores, and a 2.84GHz core with high clock speed, along with Adreno 650 GPU. The phone also comes with inbuilt support for 5G networks. This is undoubtedly the best gaming processor for an Android smartphone right now.

On Antutu, this chip gets 569498 points in total, in which 212782 is for the GPU.

Currently, if you want to own a smartphone with the Snapdragon 865, you will have to pay from 1.1 to twice the price of the Black Shark 3 Pro, except for the Xiaomi Poco F2 Pro, which is priced at Rs 40,790. To compare, the OnePlus 8 Pro and the Sony Xperia 1 II come at a price of Rs 54,999, the Motorola Edge Plus is worth Rs 74,999, while the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G comes at a price of Rs 99,890.

On the other hand, in the same price range, competitors mostly pack the Snapdragon 855 Plus processor, except for the Xiaomi Mi 10 that packs the Snapdragon 865.

In gaming tests, it appears that the processor successfully maintains the 60fps frame rate, the graphics is really smooth and there are no frame drops, and you can enjoy any intensive title on this phone. Excellent!

Storage

In terms of RAM and ROM, there are three options to choose from: 8GB RAM/128GB onboard memory, 12GB RAM/128GB internal storage, and 12GB RAM/256GB onboard memory. The largest capacity is the same as some of the highest-end, more expensive handsets like the Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus 5G and the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro 5G.

There’s nothing to complain about this RAM capacity, especially at this price range. With 12GB of RAM, the Black Shark 3 should be able to handle any mobile game you throw at it, which is not surprising considering its sole purpose but still really amazing.

When tested in a 25-degree-C, the phone heats up to 40 degrees over a 30-minute session, which is pretty good. This means you won’t have to worry about overheating issues when playing games on this phone. It does get hotter due to game processing, but any phone will do when handling an intensive title for a long time, and it doesn’t feel too hot on the touch so you will be fine.

Battery

In terms of battery, the Black Shark 3 packs a 4,720mAh battery, which is the largest capacity currently offered on a smartphone. While the battery life should be long, the phone also supports 65W fast charging that will quickly refill your battery completely within 38 minutes. This could be an important factor as it determines how you can play your games continuously. In addition, you get support for 18W wireless charging.

As we mentioned in the previous section, the phone can heat up to 40 degrees C during gameplay, but the heat is distributed evenly across the back of the device. That means the phone will get warm when you play games, but this is normal for every device. You won’t likely experience overheat with this handset though.

Camera

While the Black Shark 3 Pro is designed for gaming, it doesn’t miss out on photography capabilities either, or at least that’s what the specifications say. On the back, there are three cameras, including a 64MP wide-angle lens with an f/1.8 aperture, a 13MP ultra-wide-angle lens with an f/2.3 aperture, and a 5MP depth lens with an f/2.2 aperture. The rear cameras come with an LED flash, panorama and HDR mode. They support video recording at 4K/30-60fps, 1080p/30-60-240 fps, and 720p/120fps.

Meanwhile, the front of the smartphone houses a single 20MP selfie lens with an aperture of f/2.2 that will let you take wide-angle pictures too. The front-facing lens support HDR mode and video recording at 1080p/30fps.

This is a gaming phone so there’s not much to expect in its photography features. It doesn’t offer any special features for your photos and its processing power is likely to focus on gaming graphics rather than generating a perfect shot.