The Black Shark 2 Pro, an upgraded Black Shark 2 aimed at gaming has been unveiled. On the surface, it has some pretty impressive specs to its name with the headline features the new Snapdragon 855+, a 4000mAh battery and UFS 3.0 storage. The combination of these three will give you the grunt, long life from your device and snappy load times on your games.
For the aesthetic lovers out there, make your own judgement but in my eyes the design fits into the gaming realm easily and the additional RGB lights gives it a showy feel.
The specs
Anyone who launches a gaming phone in the near future is going to be closely compared to the ROG Phone 2. On the surface at least, it should hold its own offering users some very high specs.
Let’s start with some really happy news, the Black Shark 2 Pro runs what appears to be a stock (or very close to) version of Android 9.0.
The screen is a 6.39” AMOLED panel with FHD+ (2160 x 1080p) resolution and an in-display fingerprint sensor. According to the manufacturer they’re delivering 34.7ms touch latency – compared to the 49ms on the ROG phone 2.
Already mentioned is the Snapdragon 855+ processor and to aid that performance is 12GB of RAM. This is a really wise decision, RAM is pretty cheap these days and that has the potential to stand out among the crowd who just look at specs. Buyers will also have the option to choose between 128GB or 256GB of storage.
Fast charging support means you’ll only need to give your battery a quick top up if you’ve had a gaming session, to ensure your battery will last the day.
Devices that are high spec generally produce a lot of heat. This is no exception, but the heat management is seemingly done very well. A liquid cooled system distributes the heat throughout the device and where possible vents it to avoid overheating and long term failures of hardware caused by heat.
The camera setup is one that will be well accepted in the current market. The main camera is 48MP with an f/1.75 main sensor and a secondary camera at 12MP and f/2.2 sensor. This should give really good light and colour capture provided the software is up to par.
The selfie camera is a 20MP with an f/2.0 aperture, probably a touch above market standard which is a nice little selling point for the selfie obsessed users out there.
Sadly at this time, there are only plans to release it in China (which does not mean you cannot use a grey market importer to grab one). Indicative pricing suggests that costing will be around US$435 for the 128GB version and US$508 for the 256GB – in the current market that’s remarkably cheap for such a high spec phone.
We’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for any indication that it may make its way to Australia.
If the selfie cam is at all similar to the ones on the Poco, Mi 9, and K20/Pro/Mi9T, then it will basically function as a 5 MP due to pixel binning. Not that that makes it bad at all, but it won’t output the resolution anywhere close to flagships from Apple, Samsung, Google, etc.