A few years ago, when gaming smartphones were first announced, it seemed like a ridiculous idea. While mobile gaming is indeed a very popular and lucrative market, we wondered if it was necessary to actually make a phone specifically for gaming? After all, wouldn’t it just be aimed at a niche audience?
We couldn’t be more wrong because even if you’re not a gamer, it doesn’t mean that the features you would find in a gaming smartphone would be useless to you. After all, who wouldn’t want a display with a faster refresh rate? A phone with better cooling? Of course why not? A phone with more RAM and customizable physical buttons? Much use for that.
That said, if you’re a mobile gamer looking for a new phone or someone who appreciates the features of gaming phones, you might be interested in the new Black Shark 5 Pro smartphone from Xiaomi’s Black Shark brand. .
Design
Considering this is a gaming smartphone, we can’t say we’re too surprised at the design direction Black Shark has taken. Rather than something that looks sleek and luxurious like you’d expect from a flagship phone, Black Shark has opted to create something more edgy and sci-fi-esque.
It doesn’t look bad if you’re into that kind of aesthetic, and as you’d expect from a gaming computer with RGB lighting, the Black Shark 5 Pro actually has a small section on the back of the phone that glows green for that bit of flair. .
The phone also comes with a host of buttons along the edge such as a power button and magnetic pop-up triggers which we’ll talk about in a moment.
Display
Since this is a gaming phone, the display could be considered one of the most important hardware features and Black Shark does not disappoint with the display of the Black Shark 5 Pro.
The phone has a 6.67-inch OLED screen with an aspect ratio of 20:9. It can reach a peak brightness of 1,300 nits and has a resolution of 2,400 x 1,080, making it a Pixel density of 394 PPI. It also has a 144Hz refresh rate, making it faster than most other flagship phones, which usually top out at 120Hz.
It also features 10-bit color depth with support for DCI-P3 and HDR10+. In short, it should result in a bright, beautiful screen with a buttery smooth response that will make playing games, watching movies and surfing the web a pleasure.
It also has a 720Hz touch sampling rate, and according to Black Shark, they’ve built in the TouchControl Master algorithm which is supposed to minimize latency when you touch the screen, which should come in very handy when you’re playing. games that may require a faster response time.
The Black Shark 5 Pro will also boast dual-zone pressure-sensitive displays, which should offer more flexibility and options when it comes to gaming.
Performance
chipset
The second most important feature of a gaming phone, other than the display, is also what’s under the hood. Black Shark has opted to equip the phone with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset, the same chipset found in many other flagship phones released in the first half of 2022.
This means that it is a beast in terms of performance and users should not expect less. Of course, with that much power, the phone has the potential to get hot, especially during extended gaming sessions, so Black Shark has taken care of that by using Dual VC Liquid Cooling.
Cameras
On the front of the camera, the Black Shark 5 Pro is no slouch either. It features a 108 MP main camera, a 13 MP wide-angle camera and a 5 MP telephoto camera. It also comes with features like audio zoom, so it can automatically zoom in on the sound source and track the subject’s voice, which can produce interesting images.
Cooling
By incorporating two VC plates on either side of the phone’s interior and direct-attached copper alloys, Black Shark allows the phone to cool more efficiently even under heavy load compared to traditional thermal gels. According to the company, the cooling on the phone should be much better as we are looking at a liquid coolant flow rate of 30%, and the VC heat dissipation should also see a 50% increase.
audio
In addition to a very powerful chipset and robust cooling system, the Black Shark 5 Pro comes with a set of powerful speakers. We’re talking two flagship 1216P speakers, advanced algorithms like NLC, and additional tuning by the company’s audio engineers. It should result in a much better experience while gaming, watching movies or listening to music.
Game Features
So, now that we’ve covered the display and performance, both of which are easy to find in a 2022 flagship phone, what makes the Black Shark 5 Pro different from your run-of-the-mill flagship?
That’s where the phone’s magnetic pop-up triggers come in. On certain games on PC or console where you play with a controller, there are shoulder buttons you can press to activate certain functions, and that’s pretty much what the magnetic pop-up activates on the Black Shark 5 Pro do.
These triggers lie flat against the side of the phone when not in use, but flip the switch and the triggers pop up, giving users more control when playing certain types of games, such as FPS titles, racing titles, fighting games and more. . But what if you’re not a gamer?
This is why, as we said, there are some features of a gaming phone that can be useful even to non-gamers. The shoulder buttons can be customized so that even if you’re not gaming you can change this in the settings so that the buttons can do something else. Want to use it to launch the camera app? Done. Want to use it to activate the flashlight on the phone? No problem.
Black Shark has added a ton of customization options that you can use with the shoulder buttons, so even if you’re not gaming, they won’t be completely useless.
Battery life
What good is a gaming phone if the battery runs out quickly, right? According to Black Shark, they have equipped the phone with a 4,650mAh battery that can support 120W fast charging. This means that in “Ultimate Mode” the phone can fully charge in 15 minutes, which is crazy.
If you’re worried that charging too fast can be bad, there’s an “Even Mode” that lasts about 24 minutes, which is still pretty fast when you think about it. Black Shark also ensures that the battery can last more than 1,200 charge cycles.
This means that even if you fully charged from 0-100% daily, it would last just under four years.
Conclusion
If you’re a gamer looking for a new gaming smartphone, the Black Shark 5 Pro is a no-brainer. With its fantastic display, magnetic pop-up triggers, great built-in speakers and a robust cooling system, it has pretty much everything you could ask for from such a device.
But these are also the reasons why, even if you’re a non-gamer, the Black Shark 5 Pro can also be the perfect phone. As we said it has all the features mentioned above and also a fantastic camera system, fast charging and a buttery smooth screen with top notch performance, if that doesn’t scream a flagship we don’t know what it does.
0 Comments