Xiaomi’s sub-brand, Black Shark, has unveiled its new iteration of gaming smartphones, the Black Shark 3 and Black Shark 3 Pro. Looking back at the past, the phone will be first made available in China with the rest of the market getting it later on.
Black Shark 3 Pro
Among the duo, the Pro variant offers a bit more features over the non-Pro model including a bigger screen. In fact, the screen measures 7.1-inch diagonally — which is massive — with QHD+ resolution and OLED panel. The enormous screen is complemented by the 90Hz refresh rate as well as the world’s fastest 270Hz touch sampling rate.
Powering this beast is Snapdragon 865 chipset with 5G as well as WiFi 6 support for seamless connectivity. The processor is accompanied by either 8GB or 12GB of RAM from which the latter comes with the latest LPDDR5 memory, while the 8GB one settles for LPDDR4X. For storage, there’s a 256GB version only.
Despite being a gaming device, and its predecessors packing not so amazing cameras, the Black Shark 3 Pro is cramped with highest resolution sensors. The back of the phone has a 64MP primary camera with f/1.8 aperture, a 13MP ultrawide shooter, and finally the third being a 5MP depth sensor. The selfie camera, at the front, sits at 20MP.
Keeping camera aside, the crown jewel of the Black Shark 3 Pro must be its mammoth 5,000mAh battery with a swashbuckling 65W wired charging. Xiaomi says the fast charger can charge the device from 0-100% in just 38 minutes, which is just insane. Again, if you are in the middle of a gaming session and want no tangling cable, you can clip a magnetic charger at the phone’s back and fill up the juice, albeit in 18W.
Another advantage for gamers is that the phone has pop-up triggers, more like a shoulder button. Unlike the touch-sensitive air triggers in previous phones, this one comes with physical buttons, which Black Shark claims can be pressed for 300,000 times without any issue.
Black Shark 3
Aside from lacking pop-up triggers, the non-Pro variant has a smaller 6.67-inch screen with FHD+ resolution and a bit smaller 4,720mAh battery. On top of that, there’s also a difference in storage variants: 8GB/128GB, 12GB/128GB, and 12GB/256GB. Barring that, the rest of the specs are pretty much the same.
In fact, if you look at the phone’s design, it’s the same as the Pro variant with metal and glass built without any holes or cutouts at the front. The cooling has also been upgraded with double heat pipes as opposed to its predecessors. What’s more different from the previous generation is that both the Black Shark 3 and 3 Pro comes with a 3.5mm audio jack.
Pricing wise, the non-Pro model will go on sale for CNY 3,499 (~$500) for the base 8GB/128GB model. The Black Shark 3 Pro, on the other hand, will cost CNY 4,699 (~675) for the 8/256GB base variant. The vanilla Black Shark 3 will be available from March 6, while the Pro will go on sale starting March 17.
