Xiaomi Black Shark Gaming Smartphone to Launch in Europe November 16

Xiaomi-backed gaming smartphone brand Black Shark has announced that its first smartphone will be coming to the European market on November 16. Touted to be the world's first liquid-cooled smartphone, the Xiaomi Black Shark would thus officially be available for the first time ever globally, outside of China.

Key highlights of the smartphone include a green and black coloured design aesthetic, DCI-P3 wide colour gamut support, and Quick Charge 3.0 support. With its features, the Black Shark takes on the Razer Phone launched last year. It sports a similar design and is also targeted towards premium mobile-focused gamers.

To celebrate the global availability of the Black Shark smartphone, the company has certain pre-order discounts and gift cards lined up as part of the Black Shark Lootbox Challenge. It will also be giving away free Xiaomi Black Shark smartphones to lucky winners.
To recall, the Black Shark global website went live last month with the ability to sign up for launch information. Following that were teasers for early supporters, sent out earlier this month. A successor to the Black Shark, called the Black Shark Helo, has also been announced in China however there is no word on its global availability.

Xiaomi Black Shark price, availability
The Black Shark was launched in China in April this year at a price of CNY 2,999 for the base 6GB RAM/ 64GB storage model. The 8GB RAM+128GB inbuilt storage variant is priced at CNY 3,499. The phone is currently available in Polar Night and Sky Grey colour options, however pricing and colour schemes for the European market are currently not known.

Xiaomi Black Shark specifications
The dual-SIM (Nano) Xiaomi Black Shark runs Android Oreo, and sports a 5.99-inch full-HD+ (1080x2160 pixels) IPS LCD panel with an 18:9 aspect ratio and a pixel density of 403ppi. The handset is powered by an octa-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 SoC, paired with an Adreno 630 GPU, 6GB/ 8GB of RAM, and 64GB/ 128GB of internal storage. Storage is not expandable externally.

In terms of optics, the Xiaomi Black Shark bears a dual rear camera setup consisting of a 12-megapixel primary sensor and a 20-megapixel secondary sensor. While both sensors come with f/1.8 aperture, the primary sensor has a pixel size of 1.25 micron and the secondary sensor has a 1.0-micron pixel size. On the front, the gaming phone sports a 20-megapixel selfie camera with f/2.2 aperture and 1.0-micron pixel size. There is a non-removable 4,000mAh battery under the hood.
Connectivity options on the Black Shark include 4G LTE, dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth v4.0, GPS/ A-GPS, GLONASS, and a USB Type-C port.

November 12, 2018