With the Razer Phone last year, we saw a new trend of gaming smartphones that continued this year with Xiaomi Black Shark, Asus ROG Phone, Razer Phone 2 etc. Six months after the launch of Black Shark Gaming phone, the company announced Xiaomi Black Shark Helo at an event in China today. It is the successor to the Black Shark and comes with some improvements over the previous model. Missing features like LED Lights and stereo front-facing speakers have been added, along with more additions.
The design remains similar to the Black Shark with some changes like a different dual camera placement on the rear and a fingerprint scanner on the back. The phone comes in single Black colour with Green accents, and it looks stunning.
Compared to the IPS LCD on the Black Shark, the Black Shark Helo has an AMOLED 6.01-inch panel. Two stereo speakers are placed on the front, which is something that every gaming-centric phone should have.
Under the hood, the phone is powered by the 2.8GHz Snapdragon 845 processor with Adreno 630 GPU. The Xiaomi Black Shark Helo is the first smartphone to feature up to 10GB of RAM. Yes, this phone has 10GB RAM. Now, that seems an overkill! There are three RAM options – 6GB, 8GB and 10GB. The phone comes in either 128GB or 256GB UFS 2.1 storage options.
We don’t care about cameras on gaming smartphones, but still, if you want to know, the Xiaomi Black Shark Helo has dual cameras on the rear. There is a primary 12MP F/1.75 sensor with 1.25μm pixels, 6-piece Lens and a secondary 20MP f/1.75 sensor with 1.0μm pixels. The rear camera features include HDR, Portrait Mode, AI Features like Scene Detection etc. On the front, the phone has a single 20MP camera with f/2.2 aperture.
The phone has dual Pipe Cooling system that is improved from what we saw in the predecessor.
Probably the best thing with the Black Shark Helo is the new LEDs. Like the Razer Phone 2, the logo on the rear of Black Shark Helo lights up, and it can be controlled to show various colours. There are LED strips on the sides as well. The phone has a dedicated button on the side for enabling or disabling SHARKSPACE. Enabling it will make the phone use the full potential of the chipset and also disable all the notifications or smooth and uninterrupted gaming experience.
The company also announced a gamepad accessory that can be used to play games by attaching it to the phone using the USB Type-C ports present on the top and bottom. Finally, there is a 4,000mAh battery with 18W Fast Charging support via USB Type-C. The phone doesn’t support Wireless Charging.
The Xiaomi Black Shark Helo is already up for pre-order in China and here is the pricing –
- 6GB RAM + 128GB ROM – 3,199 Yuan ($461)
- 8GB RAM + 128GB ROM – 3,499 Yuan ($504)
- 10GB RAM + 256GB ROM – 4,199 Yuan ($605)
With the Black Shark’s global website already going live, we expect the Xiaomi Black Shark Helo to launch in the global market soon to compete with the likes of Razer Phone 2 and the Asus ROG Phone.