Sometimes it seems like cellphone manufacturers try to please cellphone players by slapping RGB lighting on a blah phone full of generic components, but with Black Shark 4, Xiaomi is trying something new: adding integrated tactile shoulder buttons that can make a real difference.
Unlike other gaming phones, such as the Red Magic 6 and Asus ROG Phone 5, with touch sensors on the sides, the 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 tell the difference between light and strong pressure, and can even be locked in place when not in use to avoid any accidental pressure. Some might call me a traditionalist, but especially when it comes to mobile games, it’s sometimes good to have real tactile controls instead of relying on just touch.
TThe Black Shark 4 features a very tame design (at least among gaming phones) with a rear triple lens camera module and a small RGB light on its back, although it’s not clear if that shouty X-theme painting work and optional or not on all models.
Both models feature a 6.67-inch AMOLED screen made by Samsung that features a refresh rate of 144 Hz and a responsive touch sampling rate of 720 Hz (which is the highest touch sampling rate seen on a phone up to today), along with super fast 120 watt wired charging and a 4500 mAh battery of decent size, which Xiaomi claims can be fully charged in less than 15 minutes.
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Unfortunately, if you want peak performance, you’ll have to go with the more expensive Black Shark 4 Pro, as it has a more powerful Snapdragon 888 processor (the standard Black Shark 4 has a SD 870) and a special RAMDISK that allows the phone to use memory as traditional storage, which Xiaomi says can greatly improve the performance of a specific application.
Other specifications include 8 GB or 12 GB of RAM and up to 256 GB of storage, with a special configuration of 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB reserved for the Black Shark 4 Pro of higher specifications. You also get a dedicated 3.5mm headphone jack and a lot of software-based game tweaks, such as performance boost and do-not-disturb settings integrated in JOYUI 12.5, which is based on Android 11.
Çwith 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, Xiaomi’s new gaming phone may end up being a very good value, also. ºand Red Magic 6 starts for about $ 585 and the ROG Phone 5 arrives even higher at around $ 950 to start.
Çwith three new gaming phones debuting in the past few weeks, cell phone players should have a lot more options with regards to the device of their choice soon.