Today, Black Shark, which is in a tight cooperation with Xiaomi, officially launched the new Black Shark 4 series of gaming phones. The Black Shark 4 standard version sports the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870 chip, while the Black Shark 4 Pro features a Snapdragon 888 chip. There is little difference in other aspects.
Black Shark 4 Price Tags
Black Shark 4:
- ¥2499 / $384 – (6GB+128GB)
- ¥2699 / $414 – (8GB+128GB)
- ¥2999/ $460 – (12GB+128GB)
- ¥3299 / $507 – (12GB+256GB)
Black Shark 4 Pro:
- ¥3999 / $614 – (8GB+256GB)
- ¥4499 / $691 – (12GB+256GB)
- ¥5299 / $814 – (16GB+512GB)
The limited edition exclusive gift box is priced at 5899 yuan (16GB+512GB prism gray), which converts to $906.
It is worth mentioning that there is actually a Peng Yuchang signature version of the Black Shark gaming phone 4 Pro, but it seems to be unavailable at the moment.
Black Shark 4 Design
All Black Shark 4 series phones come with “magnetic power lifting shoulder keys” that use a non-contact magnetic drive solution. They have 6 levels of magnetic drive and 160g key strength, up to 1 million keystrokes life. Black Shark also developed a mechanical sound effect for the machine (similar to a firearm trigger), which greatly enhances the game experience, and also supports custom functions (mapping game skills or other function keys).
In terms of design, the series adopts the integrated glass back panel, with a classic X texture built into the glass. This resembles the “Black Superman” visual sense. They have a thickness of 9.9 mm. The Black Shark 4 is available in 5 colors: Mirror Black, Ink Sea Black, Gray, Storm Blue, and Sakura Dance Pink. At the same time, the Pro offers four colors: Black, Prism Gray, Ink Sea Black (without X pattern), and Dark Blue.
Our protagonist comes with a 6.67-inch E4 material Samsung AMOLED screen. The rest of the screen parameters include diamond arrangement, local peak brightness of 1300nit, refresh rate of up to 144Hz, support for 720Hz multi-finger touch sampling rate, 8.3ms multi-finger touch response delay, support for multi-level adjustment, support for full symmetry dual-zone screen pressure sensitivity (adjustable pressure threshold), and is suitable for a variety of high-frame games.
In addition, the screen of the Black Shark 4 smartphone also supports DC dimming and MEMC.
Black Shark 4 Performance And Hardware
The Black Shark 4 Pro is equipped with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip, supplemented by a full blood version of LPDDR5, an enhanced version of UFS3.1. Also, the Black Shark RAMDISK accelerator can increase the loading speed by 20%. It supports Wi-Fi 6 enhanced version. The sandwich liquid cooling heat dissipation (front shell liquid cooling unit + high thermal conductivity graphite + rear shell liquid cooling unit + high thermal conductivity graphite) ensures the core temperature to be reduced by 18 ℃.
It is worth mentioning that this machine has Black Shark’s exclusive customized SSD, similar to Apple MacPro, with enhanced UFS3.1, disk array system, server-level storage solutions, and claims to achieve dual-channel data read and write speed. Say, the read performance can increase by 55%, while the writing performance can increase by 69%.
Say, the manufacturer demonstrated how fast a game can be installed on the phone. And the Black Shark 4 Pro completed it in 16 seconds, while the IQOO7 and Samsung S21U require 39/23 seconds.
In terms of battery life, the entire Black Shark 4 series uses 120W flash charging technology (Black Shark 4 is the first 120W fast charging model of the Snapdragon 870 camp), which can charge a 4500mAh large battery to 100% in 14 minutes and 50 seconds.
Sound Worth of Praises
In terms of sound quality, the machine is the most worthy of showing off, surpassing the Xiaomi Mi 10S to top the DXOMARK audio list by one point. The top and bottom of the machine adopt a fully symmetrical dual speaker (dual 1216 linear speaker) design. It supports 15V Smart PA and 7 magnetic circuit sound unit, which is equivalent to a 1.5cc large sound cavity. It provides a BISO sound effect. Of course, it still retains a 3.5 mm headphone jack.
The company also stated that the speaker drive power of the machine is 50% higher than that of ordinary smart power amplifiers. It supports professional-grade tuning and algorithms such as DTS, Elephant Sound, AAC Technology, and Cirrus Logic. It has a volume of 25 divisions and can be called a “music phone”.
Other Features
In other aspects, these models use a side fingerprint recognition, have a Z-axis linear motor, a metal middle frame, a hidden camera, etc.
The phone runs on Joy UI 12.5, which supports the unique “tablet mode” and “barrage notification 2.0”, and finally have a new multifunctional NFC that you are thinking of.
Black Shark 4 Camera
The Black Shark 4 Pro features a 64MP main camera (IMX686), and the Black Shark 4 comes with a 48MP main camera (IMX582). However, the secondary camera sensors remain unchanged: 8MP ultra-wide-angle lens and 5MP macro lens. The front camera has a 20MP resolution.
Black Shark 4 Accessories
Below are the accessories announced along with our protagonists:
3.5mm In-Ear Gaming Headset Standard Edition: 149 yuan ($22.88)
3.5mm in-ear gaming headset ring iron version: 249 yuan ($38.24)
Cooling Back Clip 2 Pro: 199 yuan ($30.56)
20000mAh power bank: 159 yuan ($24.42)
Armor thermal conductive protective shell: 79 yuan ($12.13)
Luminous Color Protective Case: 39 yuan ($5.99)
At last, we’d like to display the main differences between the Black Shark 4 and Pro.
- The Pro has one more disk array system than the Black Shark 4;
- Pro’s LPDDR5 (6400Mbps) is stronger than the basic version of LPDDR5 (5500Mbps);
- The external sound chamber is 0.6CC larger on the Pro;
- The Pro is 10 grams heavier than the basic version;
- Although they have the same battery and the same fast charge support, the Pro can be fully charged in 14 minutes and 50 seconds while the standard version takes 16 minutes;
- The basic version has no screen dual zone pressure sense;
- The Pro equipped with Snapdragon 888 supports 5G dual-carrier aggregation;
- The basic version supports ordinary WiFi 6 instead of the enhanced version.
