Sometimes it is felt that phone manufacturers are trying to penetrate mobile phone players, cracking RGB lighting on a phone, otherwise blah, filled with generic components, but with Black Shark 4, Xiaomi is trying something new: adding Crossed touch buttons that could make a real difference.
Unlike other gaming phones like Red Magic 6 and Asus ROG 5 phone, which have touch sensors on the side, Black Shark 4 and Black Shark 4 Pro come with real physical buttons that you can use as triggers in landscape mode. Xiaomi says the triggers can differentiate between a light press and a strong press and can even be locked in place when not in use, to avoid accidental pressure. Now some might call me a traditionalist, but especially when it comes to mobile games, sometimes it’s great to have real touch controls instead of just relying on touch.
TBlack Shark 4 has a pretty gentle design (at least among gaming phones) with a back triple-lens camera module and a small RGB light on the back, although it’s unclear if the X-themed bright paint the job is optional or not on each model.
Both models have a 6.67-inch AMOLED screen made by Samsung, which offers a refresh rate of 144Hz and a touch sampling rate of 720Hz (which is the highest touch sampling rate ever seen on a phone), together with a fast wired charge of 120 watts and a a decent 4500 mAh battery, which Xiaomi claims can be charged from dead to charging in less than 15 minutes.
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Unfortunately, if you want maximum performance, you’ll have to go with the more expensive Black Shark 4 Pro, because it has a more powerful Snapdragon 888 processor (the standard Black Shark 4 gets a SD 870) and a special RAMDISK that allows the phone to use memory like traditional storage, which Xiaomi says can greatly improve the performance of a particular application.
Other specifications include 8 GB or 12 GB RAM and up to 256 GB storage, with a special 16 GB RAM configuration and a 512 GB configuration reserved for the top Black Shark 4 Pro. You’ll also get a dedicated 3.5mm headphone jack and a bunch of software-based gaming changes, such as increased performance and “don’t bother” settings built into JOYUI 12.5, which is based on Android 11 .
Wwith Chinese prices for Black Shark 4 and Black Shark 4 Pro starting at just 2,499 yuan (about $ 385) and 3,999 yuan (about $ 615), respectively, the new Xiaomi gaming phone can end up being pretty good value, also. ThRed Magic 6 begins at about $ 585 and comes ROG Phone 5 in even higher at about $ 950 to begin with.
With debuts three new gaming phones In the last two weeks, mobile gamers should have many more options when it comes to their chosen phone soon.