Gaming laptops, Pc’s and consoles have been around for a while and are all on the expensive end of the gaming industry. Today, we’re witnessing a change in the era as gaming smartphones are now the new attractions of the tech industry. This shift was expected and inevitable as smartphone innovations involved maximizing use cases of the smartphones with the latest features, graphics to form an all-in-one gadget. Gaming was always on the cards due to these innovations even though cellphone games have been around since the early 2000’s. Now, we can experience affordable yet high quality gaming options in smartphones as this trend has only just begun.
In the last couple of years, we have witnessed the liked of ASUS and Razer involved in the gaming smartphone world, but not everyone knows that Xiaomi has been involved in this for a while, just not with their own identity. Xiaomi’s investment in smartphone manufacturing with Black Shark brought about their first gaming phone in April, 2018. Now, they have come up with the ultimate gaming phone which is better both visually and technologically.
Xiaomi Black Shark Helo was Announced earlier this month with 10 GB of RAM. Also, the company is planning to launch the Global variant very soon. The new Xiaomi Black Shark Helo has a similar design as the Black Shark which is its predecessor. The phone has a 6-inch AMOLED display complete with a Full HD+ resolution (2160 x 1080p). Moreover, the phone also has front-firing stereo speakers which sit along the edge of the frame. Furthermore, the Chinese brand has reduced the size of both the top and bottom bezels. It has also removed the physical key that was available in the previous model.
The new phone features two new 20 and 12-megapixel dual camera along with a fingerprint scanner under it. Moreover, the Black Shark Helo comes with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 845 with three storage options. The phone is available with 128GB of storage and 6GB of RAM, a slightly more expensive 8/128GB model. The third variant is the world’s first smartphone to feature 10GB of RAM along with 256GB internal storage. What do you need a laptop for again?
The gaming smartphone like its predecessor includes a dual pipe liquid-cooling system that is aimed at maintaining performance. There is also a slider on the side of the phone that activates Shark Space. This limits background usage and boosts performance further. Finally, the phone comes with the powerful battery of 4,000 mAh.
Unlike the first model, the company has now delivered two gamepad attachments for either side of the phone as you can see above in the picture. For the 6GB and 8Gb model, you’ll get one gamepad like the previous model but for the 10GB variant, you get both gamepad attachments. The phone will initially be released on 30th October, 2018 along with shipping. The pricing of the phones starts at $460 for the 6GB/128GB model, about $500 for the 8GB/128GB model and $600 for the 10GB/256GB model.
The Black Shark Helo models have been compared with the top phones for gaming like the iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S9 and Note 9. However, theses phones are not dedicated for gaming so the real competition for this phone is the Razer Phone 2 which is setting the ultimate standard for smartphone gaming experience. There is no doubt that the performance on both devices will be more or less the same as they both Qualcomm Snapdragon 845. It will not give too many surprises because we know how to behave, especially in games: it is capable of representing 3D graphics with the highest resolution and quality. Even though, having more storage and RAM makes the Black Shark Helo more recommendable if you plan to install heavy games. You can check out how these two devices compare with each other here.
Black Shark Helo
Razer Phone 2
