It’s been a little over a year since we last heard from the Black Shark gaming phone, and today Xiaomi is back with a new lineup. The company introduced the Black Shark 4 and Black Shark 4 Pro today, and while the two phones are similar in terms of hardware, there are some key differences between the two. Those differences aside, both Black Shark 4 devices are obviously intended to be the go-to phones for mobile gaming, and they’ve certainly got the feature set to back that claim.
Similar to what we saw in the Black Shark 3, the Black Shark 4 will come with a pair of pop-up shoulder buttons that aim to make the process of controlling smartphone games a more tactile one. Not only can those buttons provide some much-needed physical controls in games that would otherwise only be controlled by using the touchscreen, but they can also act as shortcuts during regular usage that allow you to take stills or begin recording what’s on your screen.
It seems that both the Black Shark 4 and Black Shark 4 Pro will be outfitted with 6.67-inch AMOLED displays crafted by Samsung, and both will tout a 144Hz refresh rate. Players have the option of setting the refresh rate to 60Hz, 90Hz, or 120Hz as well, which could allow them to bump up resolution a bit while sacrificing framerate. In terms of silicon, the Black Shark 4 will use a Snapdragon 870 while the Black Shark 4 Pro will be running on a Snapdragon 888.
We’ll also see LPDDR5 RAM and UFS 3.1 flash storage for both devices, along with souped up Sandwich liquid cooling for the 5G antenna, Snapdragon SoC, and 120W fast-charging chipset. Around the back, we’ll find a triple camera array that includes a 64 MP main camera, 8 MP wide angle lens, and a 5 MP macro camera. That seems to be the same across both devices, though Xiaomi notes that the Black Shark 4 Pro will be able to record video in HDR10+.
The standard Black Shark 4 will come in four different configuration options: 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage for 2,499 RMB (around US$383), 8GB+128GB for 2,699 RMB (US$414), 12GB+128GB for 2,999 RMB (US$460), and 12GB+256GB for 3,299 RMB (US$506). The Black Shark 4 Pro, meanwhile, has three different configuration options: 8GB+256GB for 3,999 RMB (US$613), 12GB+256GB for 4,499 RMB (US$690), and finally, 16GB+512GB for 5,299 RMB (US$819). For now, these phones have only been confirmed for China, but Xiaomi says that we’ll get more info about the overseas launch of the Black Shark 4 line in the “near future”
