In the wake of the new Razer 2 gaming phone, Xiaomi drops the Black Shark Helo.
Gaming phones…I am sure somebody thought this wouldn’t be a thing but after a year where we seen the success of the Razer phone and with developers creating some amazing titles like Pubg and Fortnite, this was bound to happen. Hot on the heels of the Razer 2, Xiaomi has dropped their own sequel in the gaming dept, the Black Shark Helo.
The Nitty Gritty
The Display
The Black Shark helo sports a 6″ AMOLED, Full HD+ plus display (2160×1080), with no notch.
The CPU
The device comes powered by the Snapdragon 845 CPU, with either 6gb, 8gb or 10gb of RAM. They come with either 128gb or 256gb of storage.
The Cameras
We got a 12mp+20mp rear camera setup, with the main 12mp sensor backed up by a F/1.75 lens and a big 1.25μm pixels. The selfie camera is a 20mp sensor with an F/2.2 aperture.
The Battery
Powering all of this is a 4000mAh battery pack with Quickcharge 3.0.
Notable Features
The Black Shark Helo has stepped up the gaming experience, offering 2 joystick attachments for both sides of the device, to give you better control. There is the presence of the Iris mobile video sensor from Pixelworks for picture enhancements. It adds the ability to scale Standard Definition Content to HDR.
The Game Studio features lets you tweak performance, touch sensitivity, display & network settings, and adjust the parameters for specific games. This comes in handy for those titles that may not be best optimized for the hardware.
We also get front facing stereo speakers, an RGB illuminated back logo and side strips that can be configured in the settings. The Vapor Chamber cooling is on board to keep your device running smoother during gameplay, a dual pipe liquid cooling system and an HDR 10 compliant screen.
The device runs Android 8.1 Oreo, with Miui 10 on top. Pricing for the device starts $460usd for the 128gb/6gb RAM variant, and $505usd for the 128gb/8gb RAM variant. Xiaomi has not announced the pricing for the 256gb/10gb RAM version, so stay tuned for that.